Since I am on Win platform I use built in NT Backup for incremental backup to external HDD. But the .bkf file can get corrupted so I also "mirror" the same data without the history to the external HDD using open source sw called PathSync. All this is done manualy every evening.
Once a two weeks I save the image of the system partition to the external HDD (using Seagate utility DiskWizard - free if you have Seagate HDD) and take certain important data (but not personal), compress and encrypt them with 7-zip (open source) and upload them to the on-line storage.
Not perfect backup plan but better than nothing. I am also researching the DVD-RAM for backup since it should behave almost like HDD.


Is it your only backup? I wouldn´t trust optical media too much especially for long term archiving.