backing up

[willowman]

Just a simple question, I hope.
If I back up my hard drive onto an external H/D should I just set it to back up the whole PC hard drive, which could take ages, or should I just back up the important stuff, like "My Documents"?

[boxtops]

Ours backs up our documents and files (photos etc).

[deggers316]

unless you get something like ACRONIS and pay for it you will not back up the operating system ,so id just back up photos / docs/ music / etc that you dont want to loose

[VHG]

It is generally a good idea to take one backup of everything once, so at least if your hard disk crashes then you can restore from this huge backup.

Make sure you know HOW to restore from this huge backup if your hard disk crashes. A backup is no good if you cant restore from it.

Then backup personal files from My Documents and so on on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly or whatever depending on how important the files are).

There are backup programs that can backup personal files on a regular basis, or each time they are changed.

[VHG]

Note that Windows Vista and Windows 7 have some backup programs included in them, though I have never used them so cant say how good they are.

Search in the Windows help for "Backup" to see what is available.