backing up...everything

[marcusesses]

What are everyone's preferred back-up media for files, preferences, etc...

USB? External hard drive? What are advantages/disadvantages of doing these different media?

[-kg-]

Actually, most any media will work for this. The main disadvantage of backup media is the life of the media. As long as the media is good, you will be able to restore from it. When it ages and goes bad, then your backup is lost no matter what the media.

The advantage of backing up to an internal hard drive is faster access time, along with the ability to use the rest of the drive as further fast access storage and uses.

An external hard drive has most of the same advantages as an internal, but the access speed will depend on how it is connected to your computer. If you have eSATA, it will be basically as fast as an internal, with FireWire and USB at a slower speed. An external hard drive is also portable, enabling you to access your backup files from other computers without too much trouble.

By "USB" I am assuming you mean something like a flash drive. These are kind of slower access speeds yet, but (and I assume this) with no moving parts the media will have a longer life.

One you didn't mention is removable media (like CD-R or DVD+/-R). Slower access yet, but once again, no moving parts, so no parts to wear out or crash. Removable media also has a "shelf life," so regular backups or copies of this media is recommended from time to time.

Personally, I like multiple-redundancy. I have my backups in multiple locations, on multiple types of media. For my desktop I have my backups on an internal SATA drive, an external drive, and CD-ROM. One of these fails, and I still have copies of my backups on the other two.