Computer back up

[secsee1]

I had a laptop pack up on me a week or so ago so have lost alot of the stuff that was on it
somebody told me that I should have "backed it up" on an external hard drive that I could
buy from my local Tesco for about £50.
bit my question is would it also have saved the programs that some of the stuff was stored in as the original discs that they came on have long since been lost, in other words could I have connected this external hard drive to my new laptop (running the same operating system) and it would restore all ?

[TTG]

Use Macrium Reflect to backup everything...programs, files and operating system. It's free and the final backup file can be copied to an external hard drive. The backup file can even be opened up and "browsed" so individual files can be accessed. Macrium Reflect can also be used as a "disaster recovery" tool and as you say, perform a "restore all". http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

[VHG]

Even if the laptop has packed up it should still be possible to take the hard disk out and get data off it.

Assuming the hard disk is still ok, then see if you can get the hard disk out the laptop.

[secsee1]

Thank you both for your answers.

[bibblebub]

You could try DriveImage http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm which what I have used ever since giving on up file-by-file backups and system restore. For my system, on which 85GB of the 200GB is in use, it takes about 1 1/4 hours to backup or restore.