USB hard drive to use with Acronis -- Maxtor

I'm planning to purchase Acronis True Image, and will have to use the "burn to DVD" method for now.

As soon as possible, I plan to purchase a Maxtor "One Touch" drive. I have two computers, so have no idea how to determine what size drive to purchase. One drive is 40 GHz, the other is 8. Do you guys store several versions of backups "just in case?"

I assume I can use computer network features to send the image file from the computer that is not attached to the USB unit. (I don't have networking set up yet, but do have both on a router.)

 

It is important to use more than 1 external drive, and alternate their use, never having more than 1 connected and plugged in at the same time.

Using only 1 external drive exposes the risk of loosing all files if the one backup drive goes bad.

If your internal drives have a total of 48GB capacity, then each external drive needs to have a capacity greater than 48GB.

Putting more than one backup on each drive could be done, but that does not help unless there's more than 1 external drive and care is taken to make sure tat the backups alternate, e.g.;

Drive A might have backups from Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Drive B might have backups from Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

 

Thanks for the information, Howard.