What's the best form of back up?

I recommend two levels of backup:
1. Use Time-Machine for up to minute backup of your computer.
2. Do a manual backup of your Work folder every week or so independently of Time-Machine. This should ideally be online or in some other place other than where you keep your Time-Machine HD and computer.

Or the good old fashioned way: External hard drive and upload everything to gmail.

Regularly.

I duplicate my system to 2 HDs once a month. One is always attached, external, ready for instant "intermittent" back-ups. The other I place in a fireproof safe. You never know... Backups don't only protect from HD failure, but also other accidents. Oh, and don't forget to backup your web-server and databases if you have web related work...

You can do like back in the day... multi-span 1.44MB floppies with a giant Zipped version of your data.

You can look at a mirrored raid setup to do your backups for day to day - I used a Lacie 2big Quadra as a base system setup to RAID 1 which gives me 1TB mirrored so if one drive fails, the other is intact.

This doesn't protect your information from fire or theft, but it protects from disk failure.

You could always look into a remotely hosted backup system as well, such as SugarSync (http://bit.ly/ikLdS)

My business is based on monthly publications as well and I still do it the old school way. Two drives (internal and external) is all you need. Whenever you do your regular document saves - save it to both drives. Back up the folders containing active jobs once or twice a day (or whatever makes you feel comfortable). Then do standard CD or DVD archiving at regular intervals (once a month maybe?). So far as off site protection in case of an emergency, I have a simple solution for that as well - sell a back-up CD or DVD to the client (preferrably CDs). Sure. Why not make a little cash for all that back-up work you're doing? It's an easy selling point too - tell the client about off site back-ups and why they NEED to have your back-up CDs. Cha-ching.

Can I inject a little honesty as well? Backing up files - like surge protection - is really overrated. The odds are pretty slim you'll lose something if you're well organized and backing up on a regular basis (I can honestly say I've never lost an important file). Organization is actually MORE important than file back-up imho. Computers provide this wonderful filing system to keep things in order - so it's always amazing to me how some people just have everything sitting on the desktop or scattered everywhere. Organize your files so you know where everything is and when it was last backed-up to your external, your off site place, your CDs/DVDs, etc... It's very easy if you mainly work on monthly pubs as opposed to random jobs that have no fixed schedule.

You backup facing the assailant, don't turn and run.

But if I don't turn and run - I'll run right into the assailant. :)

Sorry gwells - missed your comment before. Don't misunderstand me - you need to back up everything. But computer users in general have to understand that software and peripheral manufacturers are constantly trying to sell us stuff we do not need. Today's hard drives are much safer and less prone to crash than in the past (the one asterisk being portable drives which overheat from space concerns). My point is if you are well organized, you're less likely to lose a file WITHOUT a crash or some kind of natural disaster - ie: accidently trashing a folder containing something important because you put the file in the wrong place. Losing a file in this manner is MUCH more likely than a crash or a nuclear holocaust (in which case your files will be the last thing on your mind anyway).

Concerning the back-up system, I was answering a specific question - how can one person back-up their files (as opposed to a network with 10 people). You like your system and I have no reason to doubt that it doesn't work wonderfully for you, so godspeed my friend. But it sure seems like you have a lot of worries... tagging correct folders (miss one and it's not backed up, meanwhile everything else in the tagged folder is backed-up - including stuff you don't need), clogging the network with constant updating and checking every now and then to make sure it's up-to-date (what if it's not?) and the software hasn't "messed-up" (deal-killer imho). So far as actual WORK involved - you save to the tagged folder whereas I save to the external... same amount of work. You check for back-up accuracy while I drag drop my active folder onto the external drive and go get a cup of coffee. My way is harder? And again, let's go back to organization - if all your jobs are in separate folders and all those folders are nested in one master folder, the only thing you need to "manually" back-up is ONE master folder. No software expense. No learning curve. No tagging. No software running in the background all the time. No network clogging. No checking for accuracy. See my point?

http://www.drobo.com

Barring that, get a good server in place with mirrored back up, and don't forget off-site storage as well. Imagine if your office were wiped off the map - what would you do. That's called a back-up plan. :)

Sorry if you took my post the wrong way. When someone addresses me directly, I try to answer them directly. I consider that a courtesy - not a "competition".

The bottom line is if you're happy with your system - I'm happy for you. Everyone has a different mindset concerning back-up and I'm sure all points of view are valid in some respects. As previously noted, I've never lost an important file in 25 years of working on computers (and two crashed drives). IMHO, I have the perfect back-up system for ME. The fact that it doesn't cost anything and actually puts money in my pocket is frosting on the cake.