I have never 'backed up' anything! how do I do it? Does it take ages?

Question

I use IBM thinkpad laptop, windows XP....if that helps!

Answer 1

backing up is a very important part of your computer day,theres nothing worse than having 20gb of precious data,photos,letters and forms and then suddenly your hard drive fails and you lose it all
all it takes is 10 minutes at the end of the day and all this can be avoided
you can back up many ways,one way is to use the windows based back up ,go to start>programs>accesories>system tools>back up>then follow the back up wizard to do your task,however this is pretty basic and is limited in its options
you can download or buy 3rd party software for backing up.go to http://www.download.com/3150-2242_4-0-1-0.html?qt=&author=&titlename=&desc=&dlcount=&daysback=&swlink=&gfiletype=&os=&li=49&dlsize=&ca=,and look through all the free back up software,read the user reveiws first so you dont download any rubbish
once you have decided which program you are going to use then to back up you first need to select the file(s) you need to back up,then select what typr of back up you want to do,then finally the destination for the back up(many users have external hard drives which they use to secure their data,but a very good way is to send them to removable media(cd/dvd-roms) this way they are saved forever and you can index them for easy access
many burning programs such as nero or roxio have back up options in them and these are ideal for backing up to cd/dvd-roms
the length of time it takes to back up is dependant on the amount of data you are using,it also depends on a) the type of hard drive(ata,sata,external) and b)your p.c,s speed(ram,cpu speed),but a 1gb file would take about 2-3 minutes to back up
take it from me,set up a program for backing up,as you will thank me one day when your drive fails,and you have all your data safe on a dvd or on a hdd
good luck

Answer 2

It depends on what you want to back up, and why.

What's good for most people is a USB stick that they can copy important work onto.
There's no point backing up onto the drive in the laptop, except as insurance against you deleting/editing by mistake.

The next step up would be to copy all your documents, music, videos, savegames etc. onto a CD every so often. It's a little more hassle (and requires a CD burner), but you get more stuff backed up. Takes up to 15 mins to burn the CD (quicker on newer hardware), how long it takes to arrange the files depends on your own hierachy.

The all-encompassing backup would be to take an image of the drive with something like Norton Ghost, and save that on an external drive. If it all goes to pot, copy the image back accross, and you've got everything back again.

Answer 3

Get an external hard drive, the capacity of your current one or less, depending on how much you want to back up.

I'd suggest saving your "My Documents," program setup files (if you save any), bookmarks/favorites, and if you use Firefox, you can get a password exporter extension and export your passwords to a file.

You can also set up scheduled backups with SyncBack (it's free).

How long it takes depends on how many files you're backing up, of course :)

Answer 4

Well, you could burn everything off onto a CD or DVD...that's the easiest way I would say.

Backing up just means you have another copy in case things go awry with your 'puter.

Answer 5

have you ever saved something to a disk? That's backing something up. Just save everything that won't get destroyed if your computer need to be reformatted

Answer 6

i use paragon drive backup which was free but not available any more try this from vnunet.com its free dont know how good it is http://www.networkitweek.co.uk/vnunet/downloads/2151201/hdclone?vnu_lt=nit_art_related_articles