Tecnical Question For Computer Geeks About Backing Up

You're not supposed to just back up to your own hard drive. If it wipes you'll get screwballed. That function exists if you've got separate partitions on your hard drive. The common example is C: and D:. If your OS(Operating System) and files are installed and stored on C:\ Drive then you would want to back up files to D:\. This works a fair amount of times and even saved me once. Though some of the nastiest viruses are able to make the entire drive unusable (or the clumsiest of accidents can do that too) Thats why you back up to CDs/DVDs. DVDs are usually better for the storage space but CDs are good if you deal with some older computers. You can also back up to an external hard drive or a server depending on what you've got. Backing up to external drive is common practice but many do it in addition to backing up to CDs/DVDs. Other things you can do are use a flash drive to back up some very valuable items (a 2GB or higher one should do for the most important stuff). You can also set up a dummy email in gmail or yahoo and mail some reasonable sized stuff to it for safekeeping. There are also sites that store your files too, and those are growing by the day. For an external drive these may help you http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=414&name=External-Hard-Drives http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=136& I use titaniums, buslinks and I'm gonna get a Western Digital soon. Final thoughts. I don't recommend getting a zip drive -_-. Those things are garbage and can easily break down on you. I certainly don't recommend getting a jaz drive either. Just get external drives, flash drives and use DVD burning. Its much better and its easier.

The idea is to back up the data in case of a major problem which makes the drive unbootable or inaccessible, so you should back up to an alternative drive. If you only have 1 hard drive it can still be done by partitioning the drive. This way you can use the C: partition for normal use and D: partition as a backup. In the event of a catastrophe you can reformat and reload C: drive without losing the data on D: drive.

My PC Tech told me CD/DVD is the best way to go as any hardrive can crash, so it is good I guess to have both for anything really important...

sounds like ya have to backup your backups. and I guess I ought to do it but I have only once and I think ya need the backups just in case puter goes down and you want to redo it then youhave the backups on DVD to put the things back on. hope I am right here. hugs and good luck

Hello! The programer explained it very well pye. But I personally do backup up everything using DVDs which has more space, sometimes in some USB memory stick and some files in the drive D in my pc. I'm thinking of buying an external hard drive as my hubby is using one and is more convenient I guess. But he's still backup some of his files in DVDs. When it comes to computers I don't worry so much as I have my hubby and my brother to fix it for me when it comes to worst. If I kill my pc they'll revive it..LOL!! Take care. ciao! c",)

Hi Pye, there is nothing else to add as Theporgramer said it all ;) And I use an external hard drive for my back ups without bothering to do also DVD/CD etc. I bought a new machine 3 months ago and all works to perfection the way it's set up. besiodes my partner is the hard ware geek here and whatever amis with it he'll be there to fix ASAP, and I am grateful for it :) TheFortunes