Now excuse if im in the wrong place here but I am a newbie to this site and infact any mac forums. I have been having a reoccuring issue with my mac. When it loads it flashes this world picture (OS9 style) for about 5 minutes and then it will flash a folder with the old macos logo. Eventually it will start but sometimes when it loads the dock wont show or the desktop isnt there. Now this is similar to what happened before it crashed last time, so I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it. If I can just use the disk utility how would I backup my documents? I mean I only have a CD burner and theres gigabytes worth. I would send it to my other mac, but the DVD burner has died on it and it needs to go in for repairs. It would be suicidal wouldnt it to burn gigabytes onto CD? The way I read it is you could use an external HD, so does anyone know a good cheapie?