What's the easiest way to back up a hard drive so I can reformat??

[aces67]

I want to reformat b/c I'm having some issues but I would like to back up my music files and picture files first. I have WIndows XP. What's the easiest way to do this??? I've thought about an external hard drive or a zip drive. Am I on the right track??

Any tips on how to do this and it not take forever??? I know it really needs to be done and I don't want to lose my files completely but I'm also going to have to do it while tending to my 12 month old and 7 year old so the quicker the better.

Thanks!
Amanda

[patio]

Are you looking for a paid software for this task or a free solution ? ?
For paid programs 2 that come to mind would be Ghost or Acronis True Image.
I use and have been using Acronis for 4 or 5 years now. It's easy fairly intuitive and pretty reasonable in price.
Newegg.com currently has the best deal on it.

As far as free versions since i haven't fooled around with them for awhile i'll have to do some research.

The nice feature of the 2 above mentioned programs is they create a complete "image" of your drive...should you ever have problems you simply Restore the image and your machine is back to when the image was created including the OS, any programs you had installed and all your data.
Beats the heck out of re-installing everything and tweaking things to the way you like them.

The images are then copied to CD/DVD's which is safer than storing them on another drive...all drives fail eventually.

Let us know and Welcome to CH !

[krone2800]

dvd write ur files...

[aces67]

I'm looking at this Acronis site. I've never seen a program like this. Where does it back the files up too???

Thanks!
Amanda

[patio]

Originally you can create a directory for them to be saved to...i usually then check them with the built in integrity check and then burn them to DVD.
They can be saved anywhere you want basically. Because it's your entire hard drive the files are on the large side...

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[Sid]

Ok, there is:

USB - dongles (fairly small)
USB External HDD
CD/DVD
External SATA (Quite new)
Internal HDD

The quickest is external SATA, or putting a second HDD (Hard Disk Drive) into your machine.

Unless you're likely to need an external HDD, for a laptop or something.

If it were me, I'd probably put it in this order:

Internal HDD, External HDD (or iPod), CD/DVD.

Depends on how much (and how "big") it all comes to.

[programming_pat]

in use an external hdd, as you can then put your files on a new computer straight from the drive. You could use a dvd and an external hdd, if you wish