open the thread in your browser and then click file > save as.. it puts the whole thread on your targeted hdd, then you can use carbonite or a CD or something to back it up... to open the thread from your hdd just click on it, your comuter will pull up a browser and open the thread for you complete with links. Linked threads will have to be saved too if you want to have them available from your hdd... Maybe somebody wants to start the ET archive project somewhere? I don't particularly, but there might be somebody that would enjoy that work.
No. That would be nice, but that's not the way it works. File - Save As cannot and does not save the whole thread on your hard drive, only the current page (40 posts max). As far as I know, this is true for all popular browsers and all available saving options under each browser, and should not come as a surprise to any internet forum user. To save the whole thread on your hard drive, use the Print button, as already suggested above by mu200411. Save as html, text or pdf, depending on how you are going to use it. As already mentioned, this will not save the attachments. It does save the external links (but not their content, obviously). It also doesn't work at all for threads over ~300 pages (~12,000 posts). To save the attachments as well as links, you must go through each 40-post page of a given thread and use File - Save As - Web Page, complete (Firefox or IE). Only then, if the thread or its part is ever gone for any reason, will you still have the attachments on your hard drive. Archiving: has been done, to a certain extent. Have fun perusing The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive.
It would be nice if when you used the print function, all the attached images would print out also. Any way to do this? If not, would it be difficult to make this adjustment to ET?