I have just rented a dedicated server. If it helps this is the config I have:

CPU1 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz (Cores 8)
RAM  15975 MB
Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table  (=> /dev/sda doesn't)
Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table  (=> /dev/sdc doesn't)
Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table  (=> /dev/sdb doesn't)
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB  (=> 114 GIB)
Disk /dev/sdc: 3000.6 GB  (=> 2861 GIB)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.6 GB  (=> 2861 GIB)

/dev/sda is a 120GB SSD. This is where I have Ubuntu/lamp installed. It's the drive that will run my site.

With the account I got two other drives of 3000GB each which I really don't need but they came with the account.

I figured I could use these to back up my main 120gb drive. So a couple of things I wondered were:

1. Should I use these for backups?
2. How should I back up.

The data I want to back up is a user uploads directory full of images and the database. Everything else is either in a code repo or backed up some other way.

For example, it would be nice to know there is a disk image of the 120gb drive somewhere that I can copy over should there be any problems but equally I don't mind doing a fresh install of all the software and copying over just the images and database dump.

Thanks for your advice!

(also, happy to not use the two other drives and backup elsewhere if it's more sensible)