COMP question. can i back up my comp?

[sarahgop]

i have cox cable high speed. i want to know if there is a way i can back up my comp and save all my favorites on a disc as well as backing up the comp and internet explorer in case it crashes.

 

[Oddball]

I use a high capacity flash drive.

 

[Big Black Dog]

I use an external hard drive for back-ups. When not in actual use, I detach it from the computer.

 

[sarahgop]

what do you mean by that?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

I have a 1 terabyte internal hard drive that I added to my computer a couple of months ago, to back up my 300GB one I originally built this computer with. It has everything backed up on it, all files and entire operating system. It comes with great software that makes it magically easy to do. And it was cheap too, about 80 bucks.

I have it set to get an update from the 300gig every night, so it keeps current and up to date.

When I bought it, it was on sale at 80 bucks, it's 108 now at the link below.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Green-WD10EACS/dp/B000X4PJG8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1248133016&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 3.5 Inch, 16 MB Cache, 5400 RPM SATA II WD10EACS: Electronics[/ame]

 

[xsited1]

I back-up to an external hard drive. I've also got this:

Online Backup, Computer Backup Software & Remote Backup – Carbonite.com

 

[Midnight Marauder]

I back-up to an external hard drive. I've also got this:

Online Backup, Computer Backup Software & Remote Backup – Carbonite.com

If I want online storage I use one of my own hosting servers. It's a whole heckuva lot cheaper.

 

[Terry]

Do you use Outlook as your email program? I usually only export my address book , any saved mail, then I save my favorites and last but not least I print out a report on all my serial numbers for my programs just incase i've misplaced them. Everything else I really don't need because if it's important, that information is already saved on a disc.

Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit Is great to identify what you have on your PC.

MM, omg I hate to see how long it takes for that drive to defrag!

 

[Midnight Marauder]

MM, omg I hate to see how long it takes for that drive to defrag!

It never needs it hunnie! But hell, it doesn't have any more files in it than my main HD does, so wouldn't take any longer!

300GB isn't a big drive at all, by today's standards. 1 terabyte is 3.33 times bigger, 1000 GB. There's 1.5TB drives out there now, and I wouldn't be too surprised to see it go to 2 pretty soon.

But the defrag utility doesn't care the size of the drive, it's only concerned with the files. Just like if you were a librarian, sorting books.... The size of the building doesn't matter. Hell, it could be in a football stadium but if it only had 10 shelves of books, would take you no longer to sort.

 

[xsited1]

I back-up to an external hard drive. I've also got this:

Online Backup, Computer Backup Software & Remote Backup – Carbonite.com

If I want online storage I use one of my own hosting servers. It's a whole heckuva lot cheaper.

Do you use a program that automates the backup process?

 

[Terry]

MM, omg I hate to see how long it takes for that drive to defrag!

It never needs it hunnie! But hell, it doesn't have any more files in it than my main HD does, so wouldn't take any longer!

300GB isn't a big drive at all, by today's standards. 1 terabyte is 3.33 times bigger, 1000 GB. There's 1.5TB drives out there now, and I wouldn't be too surprised to see it go to 2 pretty soon.

But the defrag utility doesn't care the size of the drive, it's only concerned with the files. Just like if you were a librarian, sorting books.... The size of the building doesn't matter. Hell, it could be in a football stadium but if it only had 10 shelves of books, would take you no longer to sort.

I have a 225 gig drive and you know how long it takes to defrag and I have 161 free space on it. It takes 6 hours! That's using a 3rd party program, letting windows do it would take longer.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

I back-up to an external hard drive. I've also got this:

Online Backup, Computer Backup Software & Remote Backup – Carbonite.com

If I want online storage I use one of my own hosting servers. It's a whole heckuva lot cheaper.

Do you use a program that automates the backup process?

I don't need it, as I explained earlier since my software does it automatically for me between the 300G and the 1TB. However, since you brought it up I looked, and noticed I can use my Filezilla FTP with this, which would then let me automate online backup.

If I ever need to do so.

And I was wrong earlier, your $54.95 a year is right there with my hosting fee I pay, so it's actually a good option. The expensive one is Mozy. You got alot better deal it appears, for online backup.

To the OP: xsited1's option might be the best one for you.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

MM, omg I hate to see how long it takes for that drive to defrag!

It never needs it hunnie! But hell, it doesn't have any more files in it than my main HD does, so wouldn't take any longer!

300GB isn't a big drive at all, by today's standards. 1 terabyte is 3.33 times bigger, 1000 GB. There's 1.5TB drives out there now, and I wouldn't be too surprised to see it go to 2 pretty soon.

But the defrag utility doesn't care the size of the drive, it's only concerned with the files. Just like if you were a librarian, sorting books.... The size of the building doesn't matter. Hell, it could be in a football stadium but if it only had 10 shelves of books, would take you no longer to sort.

I have a 225 gig drive and you know how long it takes to defrag and I have 161 free space on it. It takes 6 hours! That's using a 3rd party program, letting windows do it would take longer.

That's your processor holding you up! When I defrag it never takes more than 40 minutes!

 

[Terry]

It never needs it hunnie! But hell, it doesn't have any more files in it than my main HD does, so wouldn't take any longer!

300GB isn't a big drive at all, by today's standards. 1 terabyte is 3.33 times bigger, 1000 GB. There's 1.5TB drives out there now, and I wouldn't be too surprised to see it go to 2 pretty soon.

But the defrag utility doesn't care the size of the drive, it's only concerned with the files. Just like if you were a librarian, sorting books.... The size of the building doesn't matter. Hell, it could be in a football stadium but if it only had 10 shelves of books, would take you no longer to sort.

I have a 225 gig drive and you know how long it takes to defrag and I have 161 free space on it. It takes 6 hours! That's using a 3rd party program, letting windows do it would take longer.

That's your processor holding you up! When I defrag it never takes more than 40 minutes!

No I don't think so, my processor isn't the top one out there but it isn't slow either. Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+, 2700 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

I think it's vista. You know in Vista you are not suppose to have to defrag either because it does it in the background all the time. BS I learned. Using Vista it doesn't give you a full report or anything, but I went to the command prompt and typed in (defrag c: -a -v) and got the report, it was fragmented big time. So I got a third party that defrags in boot partition. See, Vista has issues but it needs a little tweaks and works great.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

2700 Mhz

That's actually expressed as 2.7 Ghz. It should not be taking your computer four hours to defrag a hard drive.

My processor is 3.2 Ghz but it's not so much faster as to only take 40 minutes instead of four hours.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

I think it's vista.

There's your problem right there. I will never, ever get or use Vista. It is an enormous, clunky, OS. It's five times the size on your disk, than XP would be. And it can't really do anything XP cannot.

 

[Terry]

I think it's vista.

There's your problem right there. I will never, ever get or use Vista. It is an enormous, clunky, OS. It's five times the size on your disk, than XP would be. And it can't really do anything XP cannot.

It takes hours when I boot in partition, I use Paragon Total Defrag 2009, which it boots in dos mode to defrag...it still takes 4 hours with that!

 

[sarahgop]

i guess i dont get it. cant i go someplace in the comp and stick a disc in and back it up?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

i guess i dont get it. cant i go someplace in the comp and stick a disc in and back it up?

"Stick a disc in" means a CD or DVD? Those don't have near enough capacity to store your operating system, or parts thereof. With IE, it's part of Windows so you really cannot back it up without also backing up Windows. To do that, files and all, you either need online backup or a external hard drive. Or an additional internal one, which is what I have.

 

[sarahgop]

how do you get and install an external hard drive and what does it do?