Generally I have relied on the separate partitioning of my /home 
directory as some measure of protection against hosing my system 
through pebkac-type activities, but this is not necessarily the most 
reliable of options and certainly won't help in the case of a 
catastrophic HDD-failure.
Thus, can I please have a few recommendations for a backup routine 
that is safe for dummies (i.e. me) and is low maintenance that I can 
just leave to run according to a cron job once (or twice) a week?  It 
would be backing up to my former IDE HDD (now in an enclosure) via an 
USB.  It would be best if the application was able to tell what has 
changed between backup sessions to back up only that which is new, but 
perhaps that is the default anyway.
Any recommendations please?
Cheers
AG