Since we seem to be on the subject of backups today (see the story below this one), I thought this would be a good time to mention Carbon Copy Cloner, a $5.00 donationware (uncrippled shareware) AppleScript Studio project written by Mike Bombich. I've actually used this several times in the last few months, and kept meaning to write something up about it. Carbon Copy Cloner creates clones of one OS X installation onto other drives. This can be very useful not only for full backups, but also for creating identical mass installations of OS X (as in a lab environment, which is what drove Mike to create the program)
Carbon Copy Cloner uses AppleScript Studio to put an easy to use interface in front of AppleScript. When you launch the program, you choose source and destination disks with pop-up menus, specify which (if any) folders you do not want cloned, decide whether or not to recreate Darwin links and bless the system folder, and then simply hit the "Clone" button. Carbon Copy Cloner then proceeds to create a fully bootable copy of your existing installation.
Carbon Copy Cloner's focus is in cloning an entire drive; it's not targeted at programs like Retrospect that let you create backup sets, incremental backups, etc. But if you just want the security of knowing you have a full bootable backup of your existing installation, or you need to install a customized OS X folder on 100 hard drives, it's a near perfect tool for the job.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020423091958867