2006: Backups For Home User Still Tricky

CranberryKing writes: What is it about backups that always seems so difficult? I am trying to do a simple backup on my home XP system/s that will write to my dvd burner. About 30GB of files. I don't want compression (most of it is mp3 which doesn't compress well anyway). I want a routine to simply write my selection to the dvd writer and spread across however many discs is required (rather than me manually approximating and copying to each disc). I want the files on the disc readable from any system so no proprietary backup wrapper or dat files please. My last attempt was using a free program that looked good called Simply Safe Backup, but it created two coasters before crashing with an unknown error. If I can just get a full backup to work smoothly, then I'll worry about scheduling, incremental, encryption &c.

This seems like a very common scenario for home & small offices. What is a elegant, reliable & cheap(free) solution to this?