Disk maintenance and backup suggestions please

[Sparkling]

After yet another disk failing I'm starting to come around to the idea of scheduling disk maintenance. I know chkdsk is available however I don't know if it is any real use - are there any better programs out there?

I backup my business data using ibackup.com so that it is stored remotely and automatically. However I nearly lost a huge amount of personal info (30 GB and growing) of piccies and video. I'm looking for an external hard drive to backup onto - any suggestions to make/model?

[SneakyNeil]

Personally I really rate chkdsk, it needs to be chkdsk c: /f /r to really check properly. A long test in SeaTools or IBM drive fitness test is also good. Also check the system event log now and then, a lot of disk faliures will give early warnings there first. These are tests to possibly give early warning of failure though not preventative maintainance. I don't think there really is any preventative maintainance you can do as far as I know. Disks fail, end of... that's what backups are for.