What OS and backup utility do you use, Craig? I used to use NTBackup in the days of NT4's (remember the "good old days" when we had some choices?) client-server networking, and I had another backup utility that was useful for backing up my Netware server to tape. However, under NT and Win2K, there is no useable backup utility of which I'm aware. I stopped using tape when it started taking more than 24 hours to perform my daily backup. It was comforting, however, to know that I could recover from a hard disk failure. Today it appears that's no longer possible.

Backup utilities need to present the backup device in a way that masks it from the OS so that OS-based viruses, for example, don't "see" the device, and, hence, can't infect files not already infected on that device. I've considered using NTBACKUP, which works under XP, but don't really know how effective it is for backup of the OS and registry.

What can you tell me about that?

RE