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Hi, I plan to backup my laptop once a week using CD's. However, they only store up to 700MB so I can't create disk images. Because I want to be on the safe side, I'd like to fill up as much of a CD as I can, so
1. What part(s) of my XP laptop do I backup,
and
2. Is there a *portable* program out there that can eliminate some of the manual work required here?
personaly i back up /mydocuments and /programs.
if possible use 7zip
i would either get a dvd burner and some blanka or an external hard drive
cd's are not the most effective backup method
anyways, just backup the MY documents/Pictures/Videos/etc
is kind of a problem, since at some point microsoft decided that burning CD can be done only under administrator privilages. But as it is your own PC, this could be not a problem. There are several CD burning tools portable, (search this site here).
It is best to back up all your data and documents, if you have all indefoult position the take the my documents folder and probably useful can be also to save whole subfolder of the applications and data .
BTW: all image software known to me will backup whole system on CD. All such software will take care of splitting the file properly, use best space of the CD etc. For number of compatibility reasons I have some images also on CD, this can be a box full of them , but it works and is in general then all self starting since a copy of the imaging software will be stored together with the data on the first CD.
I don't know your budget on backing up but I think that you should try DVDs or other media that has more storage on it, as mentioned eariler. Though that still would cost alot of money. I suggest that you just buy an external hard drive that is for backing up, (you could buy a 2 TB for example) and you would save yourself alot of money because those can be reused. I also suggest that you do a full virus scan before you back up just in case you back up with a virus so when you restore everything is still infected.
I think you should back up, like said earlier, the personal data that you have on your computer (saves on games, my documents, downloads, and the like...). That way you can save alot of room by not backing up all the stuff you can reinstall using CDs of software that you already bought.
Hope this helps.
Just thought I might add that in XP there is a Folder called application data (hidden folder) that stores the settings for alot of applications like firefox plugins and similar things.
(For XP) It is located in:
X:\Documents and Settings\All Users\application data and
X:\Documents and Settings\Thorn\Application Data
where X is the letter of the current drive.
If the settings are not located here, then it is located in the application folder in the Program files under the X drive.
I don't know where these folders are in Vista or Windows 7. This only refers to XP.
In my opinion, cd's are best for backup up photos, because they hardly change.
However, if you want to be able to quickly restore everything, backup your user profile folder (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\<username>), and perhaps a registry export.
Are you sure you can't use a flash drive :???
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