I have a three external drives and I cycle them around my two machines. Each has a backup script that's run and forget, and takes about 20 minutes to run. I r

I have a three external drives and I cycle them around my two machines. Each has a backup script that's run and forget, and takes about 20 minutes to run. I run them most mornings while I have breakfast. The directory structure is: +-- Machine1 -- +-- date0a --+-- Data | +-- date1a --+-- Data | +-- date2a --+-- Data | +-- ... | +-- Machine2 -- +-- date0b --+-- Data +-- date1b --+-- Data +-- date2b --+-- Data +-- ... So for each machine there is a directory containing the backups. The backups are named as the date/time when they were taken. This would seem slow and wasteful, but each backup has hardlinks - where possible -- to the previous backup. So the space taken by each new backup is only the files that have changed, but each backup can be copied as a whole, and doesn't need to be reconstructed in any way. It has the benefits of differential backups, but without having to restore a complete checkpoint and then roll forward with the updates. rsync has options to do most of this for you. I can provide scripts if you're interested, but I'm sure others will comment here will more slick and tidy solutions. I do this because I understand it completely, it meets my needs, and the backups are completely under my control. I had a disk failure in February, regular backups saved me. I'm sorry you've had this experience, and wish you luck in recovering.