Best way to back up?

[markpsych]

Family laptop sounds like it's on its way out....squealing like a pig + juddery picture unless I prop it up at an angle

Just wondering what I should buy to back everything up. I don't think there's a huge amount on there, some work documents and a few hundred photos, some music and a couple of films.

Any advice appreciated

[cutmymilk]

Pen drives? External hard drive? DVDs?

[markpsych]

What's the simplest way?

Copying specific stuff to a pen drive, or the whole lot onto an external hard drive? Or is it the same process

[cutmymilk]

Largely the same - copy and paste the files to the drive.

[markpsych]

Thanks....I guess it's just the size thing I never got my head around. I'm assuming the external hard drive has a MUCH larger capacity than your average pen drive?

Would rather have everything in one place. What size would you recommend?

[charlesr]

ms sync toy will easily echo your stuff to the place of your choosing at the touch of a button. I use it to regularly echo "my documents" to another drive.

If you use norton ghost or something to backup the drive to a spare you can restore it with a bootdisc to the new hdd and be up and running as if it never happened. However, you'll need to buy 2 new drives to do this. I do this every couple of months to another spare drive.

[cutmymilk]

Thanks....I guess it's just the size thing I never got my head around. I'm assuming the external hard drive has a MUCH larger capacity than your average pen drive?

Would rather have everything in one place. What size would you recommend?

As you said you didn't have much you shouldnt need a massive hard drive. Right click all of your folders that you want to back up and go to properties. Add how many gigabytes you need to back your stuff up from there (in case you don't know there are 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte).

You can get 8 Gigabyte USB drives fairly cheaply now, or a massive external drive for under ?80. Depends on your needs, really.

[markpsych]

Wow, had no idea the pen drives were so cheap now.

Are the no names on ebay a safe enough bet?

[talizker]

and for a slightly different approach get 2Gb of online Backup with a great client for free at http://mozy.com/home. Have been using them for home and business for sometime with great sucess.