The best way - depends on what you need. Here is what I do - Each night, I have a cron job that mounts an external drive and I copy files. Here is a snippet: #!/bin/bash ### backup to usb drive ### # Ensure the device is plugged in if [ ! -b /dev/USB-500GB-EXT ]; then exit 1 fi # Mount the backup mount point mount /backup echo "*******************************">>/backup/backup.log echo "Start Backup">>/backup/backup.log date>>/backup/backup.log echo "/home/klee/ - processing ...">>/backup/backup.log # Copy data from /home/klee cd /backup mkdir /backup/home mkdir /backup/home/klee cd /backup/home/klee cp -a -u -v --reply=yes /home/klee/ /backup/home/ date>>/backup/backup.log echo "Backup Complete">>/backup/backup.log cd /root # unmount the backup mount point umount -l /backup ############################################### From work, I use rsync. With a windows laptop, I would use rsync and ssh with cygwin. Here's a sample of that script: @echo off setlocal set PATH=c:\cygwin;%PATH% set CYGWIN=binmode tty set TERM=ansi set USERNAME=klee set HOME=c:\cygwin set RSYNC_RSH=ssh.exe @echo on c: cd "\My Documents" rsync -e c:\cygwin\ssh -va ./ username@ipaddress:/home/klee/mydocuments/ endlocal Hope that gives you some ideas. For this to work, I have a dedicated server at home and spend an extra 5 dollars a month for a static IP address. This way I can SSH to my Home PC anytime I need from just about anywhere I have an internet connection. This has really helped when I needed to get a hint from sourcecode I had at home. Just a quick SSH terminal session, and I had what I needed. Ken