Backing up is hard to do?

Backing up is like Mark Twain's famous quip about the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. We all pay lip service to the idea, but a meltdown on our computer frequently finds us out. If you are like me, I suspect it's because there is a significant price to pay, either in dollars for something like a separate back-up hard drive or tapes, time (if you are backing up to disks), or the complexity of the best way to do it. I used to just back up my essential data to CDs, and then DVDs, but because I do a lot of graphics intensive work and video, the size of the essential data has now rendered that impractical. Which is why I bought an extra hard drive. But there are still lots of things I am very hazy about. For instance, when you start reading the literature, you come across terms like "imaging a disk", or "cloning a disk", which leave you none the wiser. And how much should you back up anyway? So I am thankful to have come across a triad of helpful articles at PC World which might also answer some of your questions:
What's the best way to back up what I need to back up?
Should I Image the Hard Drive or Clone it?
More on Image Backups