[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

It's bad, but I don't have a really solid backup schedule for my system. There's plenty in place for my "work" system, but not for the one I'm writing this on now.

The closest thing I have to a schedule is running SyncToy once in a while to get my whole profile folder (I'm using Windows XP) onto a separate system and a separate HD. Far from perfect (no image), but at least I have the data.

If funds weren't a limiting factor, I'd just buy a couple of 500GB drives and put them into a beige box running linux (like Ubuntu!) and run backups to that, but unfortunately... I don't have a wealthy benefactor to help with that.

There's box.net, but I feel like that would be limited. I could also try the all-too-shaky "save it to a mounted gmail volume" but that's more than a little scary for important stuff.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a free/cheap solution to back up my system (and possibly one other)? Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and buy a new, fresh HD...