I know this is old, but I have a knack for digging out old posts, anyways, Carbonite is a online back up "cloud". Your information is as safe there as it is sitting on your desk. Also what happens if you have a fire, your desktop and your external are both gone and now you have lost everything. Really the best thing to do is to back up stuff you cherish such as picures and stuff on an external and even to a cloud program like carbonite. Important documentation I would recommend to print paper copies and keep them in a fire box somewhere if they are that important. If someone wants your information they are going to get it, idc what you have for firewalls and such, the pentagon gets hacked almost regularly ( remember all that ssn number that got released a few years ago)? Also as for AV's I would recommend AVG or avast as well. Norton has just become a resource hog for no more than what it does. The last norton Program I had in '08 was Norton 360 after doing a scan when it was almost expired I had over 1,000 adware, malware, and spyware hits on superantispyware. Since then I ran avira for a short while which is also free and is ok, but I didn't like the layout scheme of it, so I switch to avast and haven't looked back. I did a scan the other day with superantispyware (first one since early 09) and I only had like 300 hits, mostly tracking cookings and low risk stuff that isn't really all that harmful just tracks your surfing habbits so they can customize the add that you see on most webpages.