Hi Edwin - Something you must consider is: - why am I backing up? A) In case my laptop explodes/is stolen B) In case I accidentally lose some valuable files C) To go back in time to prior versions Things like Xcopy backup sound good until your hard drive explodes or you want to go back in time. With WHS you can reinstall your setup from scratch in an hour or two. No need to reinstall Windows, applications, settings or data. It completely re-images your drive. If you use your laptop or desktop for work or anything else time-critical the investment in WHS more than pays for itself when you need to do a restore. Do you have the lengthy hours it takes to manually re-install Windows, the service packs, updates, applications, their updates, etc? I don't. WHS is way under-marketed for what it does. It is a great product for any household with more than one PC. I back up all my home PCs (up to 10 are supported, I believe).

Don't mess around. If you can afford it set up a PC with Windows Home Server. It does a nice job of backing up, plus much more. For example, it enables remote access to your PC, has add-ins for "cloud" backups, does streaming, file sharing, etc... The nicest thing is the restore is very good. If you PC completely explodes it makes it very easy to do a complete restore. Otherwise you can drill-down through your backup archives and do selective restores.