HT201250 I have 2 Lacie external drives connected to a Windows PC.  What is the best scenario for backing up files on both computers?  I would like to save all my files on one backup drive and have Time Machine backup that external drive to the other.

I don't know if this is a good idea, because the external drive is going to be slower than using my local hard drive to open files from.  My IMac has 1tb and the 2 external drives have 1tb each.  The IMac is my computer and my Wife uses the Windows PC, so I have to make sure both of our files are backed up.  Thanks in advance for any advice regarding this issue.

I'm in a similar situation including movies I've purchased from iTunes...
Here's my setup:
I have all my iTunes data (music, movies, etc.) as well as about 10 GB of photos stored on a nework storage device that uses RAID-5 with SATA disks. This is basically a little toaster-sized NAS machine with four hard drives in it (www.infrant.com). If one of these drives dies, I get alerted and can insert a new one without missing a beat since the data is stored redundantly across all drives. I can also just yank out any one of the four drives while the thing is running and my data is still safe (I tried this after I bought it as a test).
That's how I prevent problems with a single disk... Redundancy
Now onto "backups"...
Nightly, my little RAID toaster automatically backs itself up to an attached 250GB USB drive. However, these backups are only of my critical data... documents, photos and home movies... I don't bother backing up my "Hollywood" movies since I can live without them in a disaster.
... I actually don't permanently store anything I care about on a laptop or a desktop. It all goes on the NAS box (Network Sttached Storage) and then my other computers use it as a network drive. It's attached via Gigbait to my main computer and via wireless to most everything else.
My achilles heel is that I don't store anything outside of my house yet. If I was smart, I'd alternate two USB drives attached to my NAS box and always keep one of them somewhere else (Safe Deposit Box?).
...and that's just one way to do it.
-Brian

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