I agree that your solution of a local backup using Time Machine, and offsite backup online is the best way to go.

I’ve been using a Time Machine for my local backup for the last 10 months, but I knew that a local backup was only half of a disaster recovery solution — because in my worst case scenario there wouldn’t be any local backup to recover from!

3 weeks ago, after reading a couple of TheAppleBlog articles about Backblaze backup (http://www.backblaze.com), I decided to sign up for a free trial. A simple online backup solution with unlimited storage, for just $5 a month, sounded too good to be true. But it was indeed true, and before my 15-day trial had ended I’d signed up on 2-year plan for only $95.

This week I implemented a 3rd backup solution for my most important data — all my 1Password logins. I created an Automator workflow to find and archive my 1Password files (in 1Password help, there are 3 files that they recommend you backup) to my iDisk, and an iCal event to schedule a daily backup (there’s an article about scheduling automator workflows here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329810-263.html).

Now I feel much more secure about my data, because I have multiple backups in multiple locations ;)

By the way, what is a good way to automate exports and backups from OS X’s Address Book and iCal?

Yes, but only if 2 things are true.

1) Are you syncing your iDisk to your Mac’s Desktop? If so, then there is a sparsebundle disk image created at the following location ~/Library/FileSync/###########e/BROR_iDisk.sparsebundle.

2) You are not excluding the above location in your Time Machine Preferences. If not, then your iDisk is indeed being backed up by Time Machine. In the event of disaster, you can Restore the above sparsebundle and retrieve your missing files.

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Thanks and have a great day!

iDisk has a default colder titled ‘Backup’ (Ref:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1716) as well as a folder titled ‘software’ with the latest backup application needed to take advantage of the functionality.

Both provide version history, the ability to fetch a version of a file or files from a previous point in time.

This is a key difference between backup and synchronization, which is emphasized here. In other words, synchronization doesn’t protect your from mistakes, whereas backup does.