I use Stomp's Backup MyPC:
http://www.stompinc.com/index.phtml?stp
The application is actually from Veritas but it is sold commercially through
Stomp. They have a free trial version that you can download. The
application is a more robust version of NT Backup supplied with XP Home and
Pro.
If I'm busy, truly active, I backup every day.
Regardless of anything, I run a backup Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Backup
MyPC allows for creating and saving backups. In other words, you can
specify what you wish to back up and then create a set around it that you
can reopen any time you wish to run a backup.
Most of my data is in the My Documents folder which I keep on my "D" drive.
Quicken is separate and I keep that with the application on my "C" drive.
However, Quicken also has it's own backup and any time I run Quicken, I
always back it up to a separate partition and to a data CD. I do the same
for any file I create or modify on any given day so I even if my backup set
is not up to date, my files are always up to date and I can retrieve them.
Individual files that I create or modify I simply save to multiple
locations, another partition and a data CD, the same as quicken.
I also have images of a clean XP install, XP with a good portion of my
applications installed and every so often I create an image that also
includes all of the "C" drive inclusive of whatever data is stored there.
I'll often do this just before installing an application or hardware that I
think might cause problems on my setup. That way, if things go wrong, I
simply restore that image of my "C" drive and I'm up and running again in a
few minutes as though nothing had happened.
I do a lot of beta testing so having images is important as they like us to
start from scratch a lot and beta software being what it is can cause your
setup to become unstable anyway. I also lost 3 hard drives in one year so
I'm fanatical about being well backed up. It truly empowers the user
because then you don't work in fear you'll lose everything, especially if
you are backed up to more than one place and more than one kind of media. I
also have a separate computer I use for backup as well. I wrote a column on
this subject, if you are interested, here's the link:
http://www.smalladdictions.com/Skateboard/
Scroll to CyberSpace on that page, click it and scroll to the column
entitled "Don't Get Caught Without Your Backup."