slowday444 Posted June 26, 2006 Share Posted June 26, 2006 I see Staples has a 60GB Western Digital on sale for $90. A quick search found Walmart has an off brand 80GB for $80. If I wanted to spend even less, there are probably smaller and even less expensive ones. I have used less than 20GB of the 80 on my PC. I have never backed anything up. Since my adult children have most of the family photos on their respective PCs, most of the "worth" on my PC are passwords to accounts and websites, freeware and shareware (ZA Pro, NOD32, Spy Sweeper and ewido) and bookmarks. My question is: would I be able to backup all those programs and files on an external drive and if something happened to my HD, just reinstall everything off the portable? Like I said, I've never done a backup so I really don't exactly know how it works, although with XP, most things are almost self explanatory. I also don't know what can and can't be backed up. Don't you just hate us 58yr old pc illiterates? Thank You! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PS3 Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 about a year ago people were paying about US$1 for a gig and now i pay AU$0.90 per gig. which is US$0.67. it will be even cheaper later. soon there will be one TB fitted on to a size of a USB Pen drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators rridgely Posted July 1, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 1, 2006 What you would make back ups of would be your files(word, ppt, pictures, ect) You could download the installers to your programs and put the keys in text documents if you want but you cant just back up the program files and reinstall it from that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFiresInTheSky Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 dont spend more than 50 cents per GB US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1984 Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 i have everything on my computer backed up on one of my external hard drives. i just created a file folder called "new computer downloads" in the even my computer crashes (which has happened twice) or i purchase a new computer (which i am still kicking around). Once you create a folder or if you dont mind everything willy nilly all over the place, just "drag and drop" the file onto the external hard drive icon on your desktop-which is what i do. All of my photos, bookmarks, files, etc. are kept as a back up this way. i also burn them all to disk now as well. its really easy, and worth the money to do this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PS3 Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 if you hate backing your files on an external hard drive then wait till the end of this year when you can get holographic discs. (HD) they can store up to 300GB on each disc. the size of it, is the size of a dvd but a tiny bit thicker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators rridgely Posted July 2, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 2, 2006 Yeah but those discs and the burner will cost more than a hard drive. Plus it would take FOREVER to burn 300gb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PS3 Posted July 2, 2006 Share Posted July 2, 2006 it doesnt take as long as you would imagine it to be. The HVD also has a transfer rate of 1 gigabyte/s all the info on HVD, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators rridgely Posted July 2, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 2, 2006 That still dosen't give a deffinite time frame of how long it will take to burn a disc. I found this interesting though: However, the reader currently costs approximately US$15,000, and a single disc currently costs approximately US$120, and by 2010, will cost about US$100. That alone makes this discusion irrelevent as the average home user will never pay this. Especially slowday who dosen't even need to store over 20gb at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Andavari Posted July 2, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 2, 2006 Personally I would either use WinRAR (shareware, 40 days trial) with at least a 5% recovery record, or 7-Zip to compress the backups and burn those archives onto a CD-R or CD-RW, I'd however make two identical discs because I'm paranoid about my backups. You need to backup the My Documents folder, the folder where the downloaded Setup programs are located, and also important don't forget your web browser bookmarks; Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox. Make sure you have ready to install immediately your firewall software (if you use a 3rd party firewall), antivirus software, and antispyware software since there's no sense getting infected from the get go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators hazelnut Posted July 2, 2006 Moderators Share Posted July 2, 2006 Slowday 444, I would also put in a copy of your e-mail address book. In my case it's outlook express, and last year djlizard gave me this tip to make a copy of it, (note for outlook express) Do start, run and paste in %appdata%\Microsoft\Address Book and save it to wherever you want. In my case one copy to my documents and one to my external hard drive. It was a good tip as they are hard to replace when you have a lot! Support contact https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general or support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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