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[Micro102]

this is important, my charger wires have all frayed (cheapest materials ever), and my laptop needs to be sent in for repairs. need to know how to back up my data to a disk. cant find anything using google, just a bunch of people saying they i should back up stuff without telling me how.

ive got vista 32 bit, HP pavilion dv6000.....plz give me step by step instructions to how to back up ALL my data onto a disk

[Smitehappy]

You could do it the old fashion way with a whole bunch of blank CDs or find a virtual computer service I suppose.

Edit: Wait, what do you need to backup?

[Armok]

I use external hard drives, but those are kinda expensive and thus not woth it unless you do multiple backups of large stuff all the time. I know there is also internet backup services but I don't know were, how they work, or if they cost money. Depending on the answers to those queries I might find the info given in this thread useful as I've for some time now wanted to have my data in different places in case the entire continent gets nuked of the map...

[G-Flex]

What are you trying to back up, and how much of it?

There's a big difference between "I've got a few photos I want to save" and "I have 500 GB of movies I want to save".

[Micro102]

im sending in my laptop to be fixed and they will wipe whatever is on it....so everything

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

How many GB?

[Micro102]

almost 80 GB

[Yanlin]

Buy a stack of blank DVDs and just manually back up. The simplest way. Pretty cheap too.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, although that'll take a lot of DVD-Rs to do.


If you know somebody with an external hard drive lying around with some free space on it, that'd be your best bet, but you might not, in which case DVDs would work, if you want to bother burning so many.


Question: Why do they need to wipe the hard drive anyway?

If it's being sent in for mechanical/electrical repairs, they shouldn't have to do anything to the hard drive (since obviously the hard drive isn't problematic, or else you wouldn't be able to back stuff up).

[Micro102]

for the love of god you guys are doing the same thing as the search engines....i need to know *****HOW***** to back up stuff onto my disks. step by step instructions. how to pick up from where i left off and if downloading them back one at a time will cause any problems.

[Dasleah]

for the love of god you guys are doing the same thing as the search engines....i need to know *****HOW***** to back up stuff onto my disks. step by step instructions. how to pick up from where i left off and if downloading them back one at a time will cause any problems.

If you have a portable hard drive:

• Step One: Ctrl-C
• Step Two: Ctrl-V
• Step Three: Repeat.

If you have a stack of DVDs:

• Step One: Open burning software.
• Step Two: Put blank DVD into drive.
• Step Three: Add files to DVD.
• Step Four: Burn.
• Step Five: Repeat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you're not smart enough to figure that out, perhaps you should just tell them not to bother returning the damn laptop. Seriously.

[G-Flex]

Windows has enough of its own burning software that it should be easy as hell. Normally you can just drop-and-drop/copy-paste the files to the drive if you have blank media in it.

[Sowelu]

In general, any game or program that you have to install?  You'll have to install it all over again from scratch when you get your machine back (if they did in fact wipe the hard drive).  So if you have any saved games, you might root around on your hard drive to try and find those specifically.  I can't give more specific advice.

Things like DF that you don't install, you can copy those back from wherever you put them.

[Micro102]

what im saying is, when i copy and paste, i copy and paste my c drive, d drive, e drive....is it safe to have the same thing burned onto 2 disks, like

whatever.exe on 1 disk then the same whatever.exe on another, then download them both back on, will tat cause problems? or do i have to be percise in the files that are copied?

if downloading onto an external hardrive, ca i just open up computer, highlight everything there, and thats all i need? or are there some files not under computer that i need to get?

ive got way to much data on this laptop to just lose i because of some stupid mistake

[Mephisto]

In general, backing up installed *programs* like that is a no-no. You won't have any of the possible registry entries they made. If you're this worried about data loss, remove the hard drive and put it back in when you get your computer back.