[John Bull]

I have Windows 2002 XP Home, with SP3. There are no additional features, just my C Drive hard disc. No floppy discs, no nothing.

Please excuse my Kindergarten question, but after many years plonking the keys, I have never made a back up in my life and don`t even know how to start.

Is there an easy means of doing this ? I am looking for a simple way, possibly some small freebie software program that is easy to use and just needs a few mouse clicks to compose a back up.
I do use Sandboxie all the time to open my Firefox 3.6.18 browser.

Thanks
John

[Macboatmaster]

Not the question you asked but this
Firefox 3.6.18 browser.
is way out of date,
Firefox 5 was released in stable certified version 22 of this month
Firefox 4 has been available for sometime.
I advise you to update..

To the actual question there are many ways of doing this.

Go Start. right click My Computer, click properties, click hardware tab, click device manager and on the entry disk drives, expand it and provide me with the details of either the C drive Identifier.
or the external drive

XP Profesional has its own included backup and can be installed from the CD on XP HOME.
Not the easiest to use, nor I think the best, but many people do use it.
I do as a second backup medium
See this link where if you are so inclined you can watch a video of HOW TO
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308422

and another guide
http://www.microsoft.../howbackup.mspx

[123Runner]

Are you looking to back up the data? because that is what a typical backup is. A disk image would create a clone of the entire hard drive so that you could get back "to the way it was" at time of failure.
Either way you will need something to back up to. That can be CD's or another hard drive. I do not recommend backing up to a separate partition on the main C drive because if the disk crashes then you lose it all.

I recommend a USB drive for back up.
I use SyncBack Free. I also use Norton Ghost because I had it.

[John Bull]

123Runner, on 25 June 2011 - 02:01 PM, said:

Are you looking to back up the data? because that is what a typical backup is. A disk image would create a clone of the entire hard drive so that you could get back "to the way it was" at time of failure.
Either way you will need something to back up to. That can be CD's or another hard drive. I do not recommend backing up to a separate partition on the main C drive because if the disk crashes then you lose it all.

I recommend a USB drive for back up.
I use SyncBack Free. I also use Norton Ghost because I had it.

Thanks 123,

Your comments are as expected and perfectly explain the matter.
I have never touched a CD-ROM in my life except to load certain programs. I would not have a clue what to back up or how to do it using a disc. It has all been output and not input.

My question was raised because everything I read says "You must do a back up first" and here am I like Goldilocks not knowing what to do about it.

John

[Macboatmaster]

You will need a CD write or DVD write hardware (as that covers CD as well) on the computer.
The easiest and most effective way is to purchase an external hard drive, connected by USB to the computer.
Some of these drives can be purchased with their own back up facility.
Personally, and as 123Runner says, I like to use a program where I can choose what to back up and when.
With an external drive connected it uis matter of simplicity simply to COPY your personal data to the external drive.

Many HDD manufacturers provide free of charge a program that will create very simply a complete image of your computer so that with just a couple of couse clicks, the image can be restored to a new srive, should your hard drive fail.
Alternatively, if a file becomes corrupted for some reason or is deleted by accident, it can then be restored to the main drive, from the backup drive.
Backups, as against an image, will restore files and folders, but NOT the programs, whcih will then be lost unless the installation media is still available, in the case of a complete hard drive failure, when for instance the mechanicals of the drive suffer failure.
That is why I asked what your hard drive was as Western Digital for instance and Seagate both provide such facilities.
I use WD on this computer as I have a 500Gb HDD and Seagate on another two, where I have those drives.

Additionally Firefox 3.6.18
Firefox 3.6.x will be maintained with security and stability updates for a short amount of time. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to the latest version of Firefox.

[John Bull]

Macboatmaster, on 25 June 2011 - 12:32 PM, said:

Go Start. right click My Computer, click properties, click hardware tab, click device manager and on the entry disk drives, expand it and provide me with the details of either the C drive Identifier.
or the external drive

Is this OK ? :-

John

[Macboatmaster]

I cannot find any record of free backup software for that however you have the links from 123Runner and if you decide to purchase an external hard drive there are many as I said that include such facilities.
Western Digital provide a free edition of Acronis

http://support.wdc.c...il.asp?swid=119
However one of the drives must be WD

Seagate provide Disk Wizard
http://www.seagate.c...oads/discwizard
Again one of the drives must be Seagate.

[123Runner]

SyncBack Free will back up at set times and what ever file or folder you want. It will do what you want and when you want. You do need to back up to a drive other than the main drive.

I am actually backed up to a partition on my main drive and also t 2 external drives using 2 different programs.

[happyrock]

and remember this...
data you don't have 2 copies of is data you don't care about
this can mean one copy on a separate hard drive and another copy on cd/dvd's...the dvd's should also not live in the same place as the computer...store them at work or at a friend or family members house...that way if your house suffers a catastrophe (fire/flood ect) the data lives on...hardware is easy to replace...data isn't and in some cases impossible to replace