How do I backup my hard drive to CD's? And how many Cd's does it take?

Question

If my hard drive ever crashes I will need a backup of what I have on my hard drive, how do I backup my harddrive to CD's?

Answer 1

A CD holds about 700 MB.

How much stuff do you have on your hard drive? Even with compression you are not going to get much more that maybe 2GB on each CD. For a 30 GB backup that 15+ CDs.


There are a lot of different external hard files out there that come with backup software.

It is also a lot easier and faster, so you will backup more often , so if your system does fall over you will lose less data from a more recent backup.

Answer 2

A very smart and good Q.

To begin with, do you have any idea how large your used space is on the drive? That figure would indicate how many discs it will require to back it up.

There are a number of commercial places where you can sign up and have them back up your data for you, by the way, and if you ever do crash, all you need do is log onto their site again and recover the lost data.

Back to your Q, though, I recommend that you go visit with Sweet Kim at www.Komando.com and you will find, not only in-depth directions on how to back up your data, you will also find the available resources I mentioned.

One more suggestion. Forget the discs. Buy a USB thumb drive that is available from 254mb up to 8gigs of memory (a 1gig goes for about $20, on sale at Radio Shack or Best Buys). Not only can your back up you data on it, you can save a lot of other stuff (videos, music, etc.) on it too!