How The Heck Do I Back Up My HD?

[Beetwasher]

Can I just back it up onto disks? Or CD's?

I tried to do this and my computer wouldn't let me.

So I figured I'd try to back it up into a file on my HD and then copy that to disks and then delete it but it would start backing up and then stop before it was done and say it's too large...

My next question is, are those partial back ups still on my HD and taking up lot's of space? And if so, how the heck do I get rid of them?

I know, I'm an idiot...

[Old and In the Way]

1. Have you checked the remaining space on your Hard Drive

against what you want to back up? (right click on the C: drive icon in My Computer and check properties) If the files to back up are larger than the reamaining space, you have a problem.

You can do a search on your harddrive for all files, say, greater than 1MB...then sort the list from most megabytes to least. There may be lots of files you can delete (assuming yuou know what they are).

The ultimate back-up solution? Buy an external or internal HD. They are reasonably cheap and are a fast and easy way to back up your computer files. You can simply copy the folders of the files you want to back up and paste them into the other drive.

[FormerDittoHead]

2. Norton Ghost + backup tips.

I've used it before Norton bought it.

It WILL back up your hard drive to CD's...

I've seen 2003 older versions for like $10 which should work just fine.

Example from Foogle.com (I don't know about this seller).
http://www.eagletronics.com/cgi-bin/shopper.cgi?preadd=action&key=SGHOST03

Future tip: First get Ghost. Then, the NEXT time you reinstall Windows and install all your programs, run it again.

After that, only back up your personal files by straight copying / burning.

If the system crashes, you can restore in no time with Ghost, and then restore your personal files from the CDs.