[lokipi]

Well, my computer is running very bad and I have a solution that will completely restore it like new. I have this program called Pheonex FirstRecover PRO that restores my computer to when I first bought it. I don't want to lose any of my music and pictures among other things so I'm going to buy an external hard drive. If I store everything I want into that hard drive, restore my computer, and put the files back in. Will that be good way to go? P.S. - I don't have any viruses on my computer and I've checked that those files that I'll put in the external hard drive are not messed up or have any viruses in them. Please respond.

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That sounds fine to me. Rather than wait for a problem to arise though, you should have bought an external drive earlier and used it for regular backups of your files. This time you've been lucky since the problem has not stopped Windows from running so you can still get at those files to make copies of them.

But what if the problem had been more serious like Windows just won't start no matter what you do, or the C drive had failed? Where would your precious files be then without any backups?

Edited by pip22, 18 February 2007 - 02:37 PM.

[pip22]

That sounds fine to me. Rather than wait for a problem to arise though, you should have bought an external drive earlier and used it for regular backups of your files. This time you've been lucky since the problem has not stopped Windows from running so you can still get at those files to make copies of them.

But what if the problem had been more serious like Windows just won't start no matter what you do, or the C drive had failed? Where would your precious files be then without any backups?

Edited by pip22, 18 February 2007 - 02:37 PM.

[lokipi]

What do you mean backups? I don't have the backup option in system tools in windows. How do I make a backup?

[123Runner]

Backup can be anything from manually moving your files to the external drive, using many free programs available (syncback), to the many paid versions like Norton.

[Neil Jones]

In its simplest terms, a backup can be defined as copying stuff off of your main drive so you can copy it back later when said main drive stops working.

Other forms of backup include copying the entire Windows installation as it stands now to a separate drive, again so you can restore it quickly when the main drive stops working.

[SRX660]

You can backup by just copy and paste all files you want to save to the external drive. It would be a good idea to write down all your settings, and know what hardware drivers you will need for a reinstall. Write down what drivers and versions you have for all the hardware in device manager.

SRX660