[George]

Debi,

It is well worth the money, considering time spent after a crash to install
Norton's Ghost, and a USB hard drive. You can then keep a clone of your main hard drive and restore in minutes in the event of a crash.

Since heat is the main cause of hard drive failure, a USB back up is preferential to having the clone drive installed internally. The USB drive will not be running constantly. Just plug in to make back ups or restore.

If you don't want to go through the expense of a second drive at this time, you can temporarily use CDRW's, or better yet if you have a DVD capable burner, use DVDRW's...that's what I'm using at the minute, but am heading towards a USB Drive. Using CD/DVDRW's will enable you to re-use the same set of discs and not have to chuck discs each time you do a fresh back-up.

Warranty or not, the loss of data and subsequent hassle restoring programs is still present without a back-up.

Hope this helps,

George