It sounds like your friend at the Apple store will be your saviour. If you've already gutted the drive, you may have very few choices left. My more sensitive (music) comp is my PC. I've got the following set up: Drive 1: IBM Deskstar -- OS only and never backed up. -- It's faster to reinstall the OS and security apps than to try and recover it. -- From time to time, I'll back up the whole registry. Drive 2: Hitachi Deskstar 120GB W/ RAID+1 setup to identical Hitachi Deskstar 120GB -- Drive 2 is partitioned 40GB+80GB: Apps Drive, Data Drive. -- It is constantly backing up to the second Deskstar drive with RAID+1 in operation. -- Completed work is backed up to DVD-RW. So Yes! GET a DVD-RW burner. My work goes well into the GBs. I couldn't imagine burning a spindle of CD-Rs as backups anymore. I'm also not immune to data loss, but I think I've got an OK set up. Separating OS from Data is most certainly the first step & the RAID is just transparent. Many of the components are so inexpensive that it's just worth doing ... especially if you're in Audio/Video. In fact - it's a must if you value the work enough.