How to back up a laptop information?

puddy

My last laptop broke down and we never managed to access the hard drive.

This one is a couple of years old now and I have a lot of confidential reports on it because I am an independent worker.

I know virtually nothing about computers and jsut need an easy way to back up my information on here,

how??

busenbust

Well, first of all, good to see you are taking backup seriously :cool: You could buy an external drive and backup (as and when) onto that; imaging software such as True Image can also come in very handy;)

For the (dire) consequences of not backing up, see this thread also :cool:

HTH.

pcombo

Do you have any memory sticks you can copy it onto. Does the laptop have a cd/dvd writer you could copy to cd/dvd. Or any webspace etc online that is private maybe.

Eric_Pisch

easiest way is to buy a couple of cheap memory sticks and copy and paste your documents onto both of them

do it once a week at least

for extra security you could keep one stick at a trusted family members house in case of house fire or theft from the house

unless the hard drive fails (and there not encrypted) on a laptop its normally possible to access all the files on the drive with a £10-20 adapter


some external hard drives come with free backup software that allows you to select what you would like to backup and automate the process

puddy

external hard drives seem a lot of money though

sticks im bound to lose

Blackpool_Saver

I prefer external drives, I have heard horror stories about sticks breaking off

puddy

i only need to back up

my documents
my pictures

how do i know what size these folders are?

BillScarab

You could backup up to online storage such as Microsoft Skydrive.

http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive

Alternatively buy a pile of blank CDs or DVDs depending on what sort of drive you have in your PC and burn data to those. Keep multiple copies in different locations for extra safety.

Eric_Pisch

Blackpool_Saver wrote: »

I prefer external drives, I have heard horror stories about sticks breaking off

they must be some real cheap rubbish or there inserting them with steel toe capped size 12 doc martins lol

if the datas important stick to quality branded memory sticks such as kingston and corsair, if you hunt around the normal web shops like ebuyer there still cheap

Niv

I would buy an external hard-drive. They are about £60 for 1TB. In fact I am getting one ordered in a day or so.

pcombo

jenner wrote: »

i only need to back up

my documents
my pictures

how do i know what size these folders are?

Right click the folder and go to properties all should be displayed.