Backing up files

[vickyl702]

I just purchased a Western Digital Ext HD (160GB) to back all of my files to it. We have over 5,000 songs on our pc as well as 3 years of pictures. My problem is, how do I back these files up? Do I just click and drag? I need help. I downloaded BackUp application but its taken over 20 minutes to even start the back up. Am I doing this correctly?

Basically, I want to avoid losing all of my stuff if my pc were to ever go out on me. Also, once I back these things up, can I just delete them from the pc to not have my hd so packed?

[Porthos]

Do I just click and drag?

Yes you can

can I just delete them from the pc to not have my hd so packed?

Yes as well.

Basically, I want to avoid losing all of my stuff if my pc were to ever go out on me.

Not to scare you but I have seen backup drives go bad as well. On my important stuff I have backups of the backups as well. Burn some CD/DVD's as well.

[degsy]

Try WinBackup
http://www.backupanswers.com/freewinbackup/

[metallicat_pip]

If you copy the files to a different hard drive, then delete them from your original hard drive, you aren't backing them up at all. You're just moving them. If your new hard drive fails, you'll lose all your music/pictures.

A better option would be to copy the files to the new drive, then burn them all to CD. Pictures fit very well on CDs (or even DVDs) and if you burn the music as an .MP3 disk (rather than a regular music disk) you can often fit 7-10 albums on a single CD. You can erase the files from your original drive, keep them on your new drive, and store the CDs/DVDs elsewhere (if any files are really important, store them off-site like at a work desk, in case your house burns down, you'll still have the files safe).

[Miz]

I do recommend you copy them to the other drive. Once they're copied and you've checked to make sure they're all there, you can delete them from the original drive.

I prefer to copy rather than move so if something goes wrong during the transfer, you'll still have the originals to try again. If something goes wrong during a move (and it's not ucommon), it's possible the files being moved will get corrupt beyond repair or recovery.

One way to copy rather than move, drag them using the right-hand mouse button. When you get them where you want them, let go of the mouse button and in the menu that appears, left click Copy. Another way is to right click the file or files you want to move, left click Copy, right click inside the folder you want to move them to, left click Paste.

[TheCheekMaster]

you have 5,000 songs on your pc. how much disk storage space does that take. what format is your songs in, if not already .mp3

[metallicat_pip]

Yeah, that's the difference between the Copy and the Move functions on the computer. When I said "move" I didn't specifically mean the function, but rather the end result: You have the data on only one drive, and ANY drive is prone to failure.

Back up means you have data on 2 seperate mediums, be it two seperate hard drives (not two partitions on one hard drive!) or on a hard drive and a removable medium (USB key, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM).

Miz's suggestion of copying them to the new hard drive is just based on the fact that a new hard drive should last longer than your older drive. However, unless you leave the files on the older drive after the copy, you are not truly backing them up.

I've had to reformat many a computer when Windows files were corrupted, and people lost files. Of course, for extra money, I would've slaved their hard drive into another machine and recovered those files !

[vickyl702]

I dont know how much storage space my music takes up but we have a lot. I have Microsoft Live OneCare and it gave me the option to back up my files to the external hard drive which I did. So I'll save it all to cd's as well to have extra copies. Now I wonder how I'll be able to backup only the NEW files after Ive backed up all the docs. I dont want to have to restore ALL of the docs, just the new ones.