Ed - You said <<< What are people's thougths on using USB 2.0 external hard drives for backups? I like to assume the "worst case scenario" so that if my hard drive crashes, I could be up and running in less than an hour with a high degree of certainty that all my files (or most nearly all) were intact. Thoughts, suggestions, input?>>> I also use Drive Image (thanks to Fred Langa!). I have a fairly new laptop with a 40 gig hard drive. Purchased an external firewire 40 gig drive so I could use Drive Image 5.0 to mirror the laptop to the external drive. Unfortunately, I didn't know until after I had purchased the software (and too late to return it) that D.I. 5 and D.I. 2002 (just released) do NOT support either USB or firewire. Did a web search and found something called Instant Recovery from NovaStor - bought that one because it specifically said it supported firewire and USB. Didn't know until after I had installed it that it only works on removable drives, not external drives. Went to Langa's bulletin board and posted a plea there. Someone was kind enough to suggest I go to www.dantz.com and try Retrospect Express - works on both USB and firewire external hard drives. I believe he was right - it's a bit trickier than Drive Image but short of actually restoring my C drive on my laptop, I am assuming it will work. I first picked the "duplicate hard drive" option - seemed to make sense in that it said it would, in essence, image one drive to the other. Wrong choice - the tech support gentleman told me to pick the "backup" option. Then you have to go to the Disaster Recovery option and create a bootable CD. That will have your system files and will enable you to get to the backup you've made (I backed up the entire C drive) and use it to restore. There is a 30 day free trial of the Restrospect Express. Sorry this is so long, but after all my trials and tribulations, I thought I'd better explain it in detail. If you need more info, feel free to contact me directly. Marilyn Milbrandt PCSOFT maintains many useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml