How do you back up a hard drive???

[Bird Dog]

I think it's about time I do this. What's a cheap and easy way to do it? All I really care about is my songs, pictures, and videos. Are there other files I should be concerned about? I'm an idiot when it comes to computers so any help would be appreciated.

[BarryTurano]

If you have a cd burner copy the files to a CD. If not buy a "flash drive" they will plug into a USB port just drag and drop the files into it and you are done.

[clt_capt]

Do you have a cd or dvd burner? If so, I would suggest 2 things -
first make copies of your pics, videos and music to cd or dvd

Second - use a program like ghost from symantec to make an
exact copy of your OS and Apps.

If you don't have a burner, you can pick up an external dvd burner for around $100

DVD holds about 4.5 GB, CD holds 660 MB, so a dvd is preferred if you have a big hard drive.

[Bird Dog]

I know I have a CD burner, not sure about the DVD burner but I think I do. I have a 12 GB flash drive but that's not big enough to hold everything. I guess I could put what doesn't fit on CD's? I've got about 2500 songs, almost 4000 pictures, and maybe 100 videos.

clt_cpt, I have no idea what OS or Apps are

[BarryTurano]

OS = Operating System Windows XP or God forbid VISTA

Apps = Applications (programs)

[Bird Dog]

Gotcha

Thanks for the replies

[Reel Fanatic]

Bird Dog-

Get Carbonite at www.carbonite.com. It's brainless and it backs up your computer automatically in the background while you work/ play/ surf. Plus it stores your data offsite so if you ever had a fire or storm that wiped you out, you could download your entire original computer onto whatever new computer you purchased...same settings and everything. It's pretty cheap too. Only $54.00 per year.

[Finesse]

I'm saving a backup copy to a portable HD. Just plug it into a usb port and save it to both your hard drive on the computer and the portable HD.

I believe Seagate has come out with a portable HD that will not only work as a storage drive but will also back up your OS and programs.

[nautiduck]

With a program like ghost you can use an external hard drive and make a mirror image of the drive and if anything happens you can ghost (burn) it right back onto the old drive or new one if necessary. I would also suggest making several duplicates of picture, music, video, and document files onto good quality DVDs or other media like thumb drive, or media cards. or even a seperate hard drive. If you use DVDs use a good quality and keep them in good covers and out of the light, as they have a tedency to delaminate and degrade.

On a side note does anybody out there have a windows XP Pro cd? Mine has gotten scratched to the point its not readable, and I have been having problems getting one from Microsoft. I have a paid for license I just need a disc. My laptop came with Vista when it first came out and it sucks so I bought a copy of XP now I want to do a complete installation from scratch instead of using my backups and I need a disc. Anybody help?

[Reel Fanatic]

Nautiduck-

If you go to the Microsoft website, there is information regarding a free upgrade this October to the OS that is replacing Vista. Vista is such a dog product (I have it as well) that Microsoft is giving the new OS to the poor saps who currently are stuck with it.

From what I have heard, Vista has been the single best selling feature for anyone considering switching to a Mac.