You’re Mac will most likely come with OSX 10.5, which has the new time machine feature. Essentially, with a “backup hard drive” attached, it does regular backups of any changes you make to the system so you can roll back to a previous image of your OS. It is one of the reasons I have been thinking of upgrading (along with the multiple desktops that I miss from my unix days…it only took 10 years to make it to the Mac!).

I would also check out ChronoSync, it’s the best $30 I have spent yet on my Mac. You can use chrono sync to synchronize/backup directories. I use it on my laptop to backup all my data directories to my NAS array every time I connect to my home network. And, since I work on photo processing in the field on my laptop, when I get back to the home office, I use it to synchronize my photo project from the laptop to the directory structure I use on my NAS. It also works great when I do additional work on the laptop and need to push just the changes to the NAS for long term storage.

(This reminds me I have been meaning to do a write up about my work flow for a while…keep your eye on my blog as I’ll do this soon!).