James, thanks for your swift response, much appreciated.
It looks like QRecall will become my safety net for when TimeMachine keels over.
I have one other question, if you will. You gave recommendations in another post and also in the documentation that your recommendation for setting up a bootable volume is to first install OS X in its minimal configuration to the external backup drive and then to backup to that volume. Did I get this right or should I create one partition just for the minimal OS and store the full system including apps, data etc on another partition?
Sorry if I appear dense but tomorrow I will install a new harddrive and would like to get it right.
Prion