Therefore, about once a week, I back up everything to an external flash drive, including the imported items. This is a bit of a pain, because it leaves me at risk to lose a week's worth of data.
Luis, I would seriously think about making a better backup plan. I am not sure if you are referring to your imported items only once a week or everything.
Basically, all of them should be backed up daily or, usually, nightly. Offsite is fine, but I would want copies I can see, and I don't have to rely on AC for.
Carbonite won't backup SQL. I looked at Crash Plan, and I couldn't tell. Intronis, iBackup and MozyPro will.
Be careful with only one thumb drive to back up to. I would have several or, better yet, just get some external drives and back up nightly. I hate to say it but why not back up the entire computer? Is there nothing else on it like, say, billing info that you would want to back up. Also, if you make the proper backups with system states, you can do restores and not have to deal with everything else. You are up and running in hours.
As Jon said, yes you can restore from AC's backup file. That is what it is for. Back up your imported items separately, then restore them separately.
