> What is the best approach to handle incremental backup > data, if hard disks are not that reliable this days? > (This is a home system, and tape drives and variants are out!) That depends on the size of your data. How big are we talking about? For me, I use Subversion to keep full history of my development files on a remote server. For the databases, I pull daily backups using scp. Then, at the end of each week, I write the data backups and a copy of all my working files to a DVD. That works well for me. > Which are the best marks of hard drives to purchase, > especially for linux-based systems that can be on for > relatively long periods -- 6-24 hours a day? I use Seagate drives on all my servers. They are running Linux and are on 24x7. Failures are very rare and Seagate replaces anything that fails within 5 years with no hassle. I hope this helps, Neil -- Neil Aggarwal, (281)846-8957, http://UnmeteredVPS.net CentOS 5.4 VPS with unmetered bandwidth only $25/month! No overage charges, 7 day free trial, Google Checkout accepted