> You can also back up just your data, either by copying it to the external
> hard drive manually or by using a backup program. I like Second Copy from
> www.centered.com. It is inexpensive ($29.95), flexible, and doesn't put the
> copied data into a proprietary format.

You mentioned proprietary format here. Is it your opinion that it's a
better choice to not use the proprietary format (if there's an option like I
have with Retrospect) or select a tool that doesn't use it? I'm assuming the
reason is that you don't have to have a copy of the application to do
restores. The trade off, I assume, is disk space. Do I have that right?