overwrite or append backup file

I'm not sure of the answer here because I backup my own important files to CD, or to my other PC.

But if your backup program gives you this option it means that you can either backup everything again, and delete and replace your exisitng backup file, or you can just "add" any new files you need to backup to the exisiting backup file.

Can you explain where you backup to?

If you backup to some other destination on your hard disk, you may want to consider an alternative method of backing up.

Backup serves two purposes. It saves your important files if you accidently delete any of them, or it provides you with a complete set of backup files if you lose your hard disk.

The trouble with the latter is that if you have saved the backup file to your hard disk, then if the disk fails at any time, (and hard drives do fail eventually), you many not be able to recover even the backed up data.

It is better, in my view, to backup to a different media, eg CD disks, or to another computer, or both. But to backup to CD, you will need a CDR or CDR/W drive, and the software to copy files to CD using that drive.

Hope this helps.

Mark

overwrite takes a long time but a one-click restore. Append means a restore requires the original backup AND each incremental appending.
Just make sure, on either, that you are virus and spyware free and no OS problems and that you've cleaned out junk files, or you will restore all that stuff as well.
As Markflax said, hard drive is temp storage. Newer Hdd's don't seem to last as long as the old ones. Backup to a CD or DVD requires enough space to store a full new overwritten backup, and not as much with an append.