I back up my phone onto my laptop and my wife backs her Palm up onto her MacBook every weekend. I then back up the data folders/partitions of both laptops onto a 20GB external hard-disk, which I keep in a locked drawer in my office at work; I have 3 of these disks, and use them in rotation. I do something similar for all of our media, using larger bus-powered external hard-disks, which are also used in rotation and which are also kept at work.
As an added bonus, we have an Excito bubba server (great piece of kit) connected to the WiFi router, which has a 750GB hard-disk, to which we can also copy files on the fly...
It might seem a bit extreme, but so far we've never lost anything important...
Thanks alot for the help malerocks
it seems that the best way is just to keep the memory card same way it is no restore no back up, and make sure that all the apps are installed on mcard, its the best method when i firmware update. since all methods will lead to the same result native apps will remain others will end up broken.