Thank you both...sorry i've been having some health issues and couldn't get back to this until now.
Yes, Gazumped, i am familiar with crashes--more than i care to think about. That's why i've got all my created files on the external drive, and also back those up to CD....i hope to get a second external drive too...
the only cloud service i use really is LiveDrive, but only because there's so much on it, i don't have time to go through and make sure nothing will be lost if i cancel it. (Yes, i really do have a problem with the cloud. it makes me nervous.)
So...to avoid any glitches with external drives, what if i used only the local storage features, and backed files up to my C drive, and then had a second backup on my external drive, and livedrive?
And if i did it that way, is there some automated way I can do these backups to ensure i won't forget something or lose something? Is that the scheduled incremental backups export feature you suggest, DTLow? I guess i will go ahead and try to set up the livedrive sync to the evernote folder. Maybe that's all i need as automated backup, after all is said and done. (?) Thoughts?
ADDENDUM: by the way, are those evernote file formats something i will always be able to access easily? (Unlike the proprietary onenote files, which is one reason i need to divorce onenote. I want to be able to control my own data no matter what a company decides to do).