Help!! This is my first pc and I am totally hopeless so if anyone can help with my following query could you please please keep it very simple - thanks!! I am concerned about my pc crashing or something external happening to it but cant understand how to back it up.Stuff like outlook express, downloaded stuff from the net, yahoo messenger etc etc - do I need to copy these to a CD or risk losing them if something nasty happens.And what about my hard drive that wont fit onto a cd!! Help, I am stupid but please take pity!! Thanks in advance, xxx

If you have a CD-RW drive, you can use programs such as Roxio Easy CD Creator or Nero to back-up certain documents to the cd-rw. Or, you can use programs such as Norton Ghost or Powerquest DriveImage to backup your whole hard drive to cd-rws. (The more space you have used up on your hard drive, the more cd-rws disks you are going to need!) Note that all 4 of these programs you need to buy. TechTalk Forums http://www.techtalkforums.com

Make sure System restore is turned on. Keep pictures and documents backed up to CD When you download programs from the net choose save instead of open and back these up to CD so you can easily reinstall them if you need to. Outlook Express use file/export to back up messages and address book, save to CD.

Another way to backup is with a program like BackupMyPC (formerly Backup Exec by Veritas) by Stomp Inc. They offer a free 30 day trial and the program allows you to backup the entire drive or any portion that you want to backup. It also allows backups of only the files that have changed since your last backup. I use BackupMyPC, Easy CD Creator, Nero, Norton Ghost, and Drive Image, depending on what I want to backup and what the intended use will be. The Ghost and Drive Image are used in case of a major crash and will restore the computer to exactly the state that it was in on the date of that backup. They backup an entire drive or partition and not specific files or folders. I have read that you can selectively restore files or folders with them but personally have not had much luck with that but they both work great for restoring an entire hard drive or partition. With all the others you can be more selective in what is backed up and restored. I used to back up to tape but quit that a couple of years ago because of their reliablity. Had a badly needed backup on tape and when I needed to restore it, it would not read the tape. Now I use CDR disks because they are so cheap and have never had even one that could not be read when needed.

with your new pc dont forget to use help most of your questions can and will be answered there!!