How do I reliably back up all of my data on a Macbook Air?

I Have a 2009 MacBook AIr running OS 10.6.7
I have begun to recieve some erros about the harddrive and when I went to verify the disc - the disc utility reported errors and that I needed to repair my drive.
The institution where I work has imposed the installation of PGP (pretty good protection) software (recently purchased by Symantec) on all Mac laptops. I have heard of the PGP software causing disc errors to a point where none of the data is recoverable.
Two questions:
1. How can I un-install the PGP software - this way I can repair the drive and also upgrade to OS-10.7 (PGP does not support Lion at this time).
2. Perhaps more importantly - how do I make a complete backup (bootable clone would be ideal) of the Macbook air - so that I do not lose any of the data on the computer? I am afraid to turn it off as I am not sure if it will even turn back on again).
Thanks in advance for your expertise and your willingness to help out a fellow Mac user.
Have a great week.

Answering your second question, first.
Download Carbon copy Cloner from Bombich.
Prepare an external drive using disk Utility with a GUID partition large enough to hold the entire contents of your startup drive. Format with Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended, Journaled. Check in Disk Utility. to make sure the partition uses a GUID Partition Table.
Launch Carbon Copy Cloner
Choose the volume that you want to clone from the Source menu
Choose the properly formatted volume (Mac OS Extended, Journaled, GUID Partition) from the Destination menu
Select "Temporarily archive modified and deleted items" ("Maintain a backup) from the preconfigured settings menu
Click the Clone button
Test the cloned image by booting to it by starting the computer, whilst holding down the "option" key, then select the volume you just cloned to. The computer should boot to that drive. After you are at a desktop, I think it is a good idea to change the wall paper to something unusual and striking, so you know that this is the clone. Play around with the cloned boot to make sure everything works. Dismount (eject) the internal HDD, so you know everything you are doing is independent of the internal drive.
There are numerous iterations and implementations of PGP. Is this a simple stand alone app that can be removed by moving the application in the application folder to the trash? Or is it a background systemwide encryption/decryption scheme for the entire disk?

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