Best way to back up my files?

Question

i have to send my laptop off to HP to receive a new motherboard.. ive been advised to back up all my files..whats the best way to do that??? im running vista too if that helps any

Answer 1

Well there are a few ways,

1. Copy them over to an external Hard Drive

2. Copy them over to a flash drive(theres not much room on them though)

3. Burn everything you need to DVDs or CDs

4. Copy everything to a friends computer til you get yours back

hope this helps

Answer 2

yep burne them, or Simply copy them to another partition than C:

Because they will change the Motherboard and not the HDD (hard disk Drive) !!

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Answer 3

I would use DriveImage XML. It copies your entire drive. (This does take time, but I think its worth it.) It is a free program.

http://www.runtime.org/dixmlsetup.exe (This will download it immediately.)

Answer 4

Organize them and burn them to recordable DVDs.

There are many organizational schemes that you might use.  For Music, I have always allowed Windows Media Player to organize the files by Artist, Album, Track#.  But this works for me because I don't download music online.  If you download music online, you can just lump all your music files together in a directory.

As for all my other files, I use the .???? extensions to organize my files.

For example:

C:\Documents and Settings\AnalCompulsiveMe\

. . . . Archives\

. . . . . . . . . AVI_Files\

. . . . . . . . . CHM_Files\

. . . . . . . . . DOC_Files\

. . . . . . . . . FLAC_Files\

. . . . . . . . . FLV_Files\

. . . . . . . . . GIF_Files\

. . . . . . . . . JPG_Files\

. . . . . . . . . MOV_Files\

. . . . . . . . . MPG_Files\

. . . . . . . . . ODT_Files\

. . . . . . . . . PDF_Files\

. . . . . . . . . PNG_Files\

Well, you get the picture.  I merely need to burn my "Archives" directory to DVD and I'm mostly done.

As for emails, if you use an email client like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc., you need to find the 'hidden' directory that stores your emails in those programs.

Burn that directory to CD or DVD.

Burn your My Music directory to DVD.

Internet Explorer used to (I don't know if it still does) offer to export your Internet Account Settings as .iaf files.  burn them to DVD too, and you can re-import them if HP screws up your settings.

Answer 5

This is the easiest way go buy you a thumb drive and copy all ur files to it every thing you will need to get a big one though so that can get pricey a cheap way is a blank DVD but you will also need software to do that meaning something like Nero u have to pay for that though and its rather confusing just buy a thumb drive bout 1gb maybe depends on how much stuff u got on Ur computer but its fast and simple i recamend buying one at newegg.com are tigerdirect.com u can also us a sd card a memory stick duo any of that i would buy a 2gb sd card make sure u have a sd hook up on ur pc though hope this helps man.

Answer 6

Create backup DVD's

Burn all the important files and documents into it

if you want to backup certain HP softwares you might have a  backup/recovery DVD with you

you usually get it when you buy the laptop  

Answer 7

If the computer still works, the easiest way would be to click start (the windows flag), click All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools and choose Windows Easy Transfer. That program will allow you to make a backup of all your files and settings, which you can either burn to DVDs or move onto another hard drive (external or another computer).

If the computer does not power on anymore, I'd suggest using this cable: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/... to connect the hard disk drive (which you will have to remove - it should slide out of the side of your laptop after you remove the s***w holding it in) to another computer, then use this guide: http://www.bay-wolf.com/ghostclone.htm to copy the contents of your hard drive to another drive, possibly an external drive for convenience.

Good luck!