How do I back up my computer.

Its a Dell, with xp.

Its a laptop. And my husband thinks we should back it up in
a disk.

Donna

Just wanted to say hi. It's a good question. I've never backed up anything. Someone will come along and teach the both of us.

lol

Melody

a usb flash drive would be better than a cd/disk unless you have a bunch of disks around already.
disks get scratched easily and may not last as long as you want them to

flash drives are enclosed with a memory chip
and you don't have to burn ( copy/write to a cd) anything to use a flash drive.

basically just click the file or files you want to backup and send it to the flash drive easy


http://www.udel.edu/topics/backups/flashdrive.html
http://www.backupforall.com/usb-flash-backup.php

there are probably many videos on youtube and websites that detail step by step how to back up your computer..
much easier than me trying to type everything out..

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&cp=13&g...w=1360&bih=636

Thanks Jo-mar

I wondered after I posted about a flash drive.

It makes sense.

Now if I can just figure out how to get the stupid thing, my desk top.
Back on the internet, at least it reading its on. But wont go on.


Ugh, its making me mad. I need to print somethings off. But my laptop
isn't set up yet.

Donna

Jo Mar

Can you back up EVERYTHING that is on the computer, on one flash drive??

thanks, Melody

I'm just curious, not that I'm going to do this, but just curious.

Oh, far from it! The hard drive I'm currently using has a capacity of about 80 gb, and that's on the small side as hard drives go. Even though there's less than 15 gb of data on it, that would still fill up 15 of the flash cards that I normally use for backup.

I have a DOS program (a .bat file) set up to handle my backups. At the end of each session, I run it. It checks in the folders that I've specified (such as My Documents) and copies to the flash drive all files that have changed since they were last backed up. Once a month or so, I burn a copy of everything on the flash drive to a CDR. If there's almost enough data on the flash drive to fill the CDR I delete the oldest files, the ones that have already been burned to several CDRs.

I back up my own data but not Windows nor any other software that I have an installation CD for. If I lose any of those from the hard drive, I'd much rather reinstall them from the original CD than from my own backup attempts.

I do save copies of software that I download, and burn those to CDR. What I save, though, is not the installed program (which can be very large) but what I call the "installer" -- the thing I actually downloaded, usually a self-extracting ZIP file that installs the software, creates any necessary folders for it, updates the registry, puts an icon on the desktop, and does whatever else is needed to get the software ready to run. In case of a hard drive crash, I want to be ready to reinstall everything that I've put on that hard drive since it was new.

If the flash drive is big enough maybe more of a 16 or 32 G size -

- or if you limit only files & settings and not the whole windows system files
- or if the flash drive has a built in compression program.

most will tell you at some point of the process of backing up - if it runs out of room. But then you have to go re select fewer files to back up. and start over.

Here are some easy back up programs that might be very helpful & much easier than the windows backup utility ( it has to be installed from the Windows CD -XP anyway)

read about them -and the comments on the bottom of the page for each program - before trying it.
If you try one and don't care for it - uninstall it & just try a different one sometime I try 3-4 before I find one I like.

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Todo...-10964460.html

http://download.cnet.com/Cobian-Back...-10071828.html

http://download.cnet.com/GFI-Backup-...-10915610.html

The only things you really need to back up are things like documents, photos, songs, etc. that you don't want to lose. The system files all reside on your Windows disk and are restored when you reformat.

Wal-Mart had a nice sale on 8GB flash drives recently. I use one on my Vista box for the Readyboost feature.

I don't have a windows disk. Never had one. When I got this, everything was bundled and well, I'll probably learn what I need to learn when I need to learn it. Here's a question. Can I get another flash drive and back up my Windows XP operating system?

Or, when I re-format the hard drive, will it automatically pop up?

thanks much

Melody

If you want to save/backup/clone the whole xp system a much bigger flash drive is needed.

You got a new hard drive fairly recently right? last spring or so?

You might ask the computer guy if he partitioned it like the HP original drive was -with the XP OS recovery files on it or not?

Recovery disk info-
[This document pertains to HP or Compaq Desktop computers with Windows XP.
HP computers that ship with Microsoft Windows XP and Compaq Presario Desktop computers made in spring of 2003 and later already come with a hidden preloaded recovery partition. This hidden partition can be used to recover all of the original software in the event of a major problem by pressing the F10 key repeatedly when the computer is first started. However, there might be times when recovery discs are needed to restore the computer, such as when a virus destroys the recovery partition. By using the Recovery CD-DVD Creator program, you can create a set of recovery discs to restore your computer back to its original condition.]
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ectID=bph08097

If no recovery files then I'd go to the HP site and see about ordering a cd or down loading the recovery files.
It is a legal copy for that computer - so it will be very handy to have if you ever want to do a format or complete fresh re install of the xp operating system. here- http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ectID=bph07143

Do Not Format until you get your recovery disks!!!
IF you format your drive and have no recovery disks available - you will have no xp system at all. FORMAT erases everything on the hard drive
Computer will be unusable until you instal some kind of operating system on to that hard drive.

If you buy a bigger flash drive be sure to ask the person if it is big enough to hold a complete backup or a cloned image of your system.

Just to be on the safe side before you do any changes get the recovery disks from HP- should be free /very low cost /maybe postage.
I ordered a set for an old compaq computer my son brought home and I was surprised at how easy it was to do and cheap- maybe 20.00??.
compared to having to buy a totally new operating system from a store or online.