Backing-up is something that everyone who has important data should be doing. Archiving onto CD/DVD is effective, but continual back-up is important. Lacie, the maker of external Hard-drives and disk-drives, own a freeware app called SilverKeeper which is pretty timely and effecient at backing-up. It offers schedule back-ups, that can exclude keyword files, password protect files and access password protected files. All and all a good app well worth its price of $0.
Get it here.