Help! Backing up my dodgy comp??

clurbur

My laptop has a fault and I have to send it away to be fixed, I'm a student and couldn't afford to have someone to come to the house to fix it, however, it is still covered by the 12 month warranty so I can send it away for free.

My problem is, i'm less than tech-savvy and I've been told that I need to back it up as they are going to replace the 'motherboard(?)'. All my uni work so far is on it along with thousands of photos that I can't afford to lose, plus I have loads of websites saved for uni projects. I'm feeling quite over-whelmed and don't know where to start!

Also, I bought Microsoft Home & Student 2010 as an extra and put it on myself. Will I lose that as well? It was a three-user one but it's also been installed on my sister's and my dad's computers.

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Stress is not the word!

santer_2

Have you got a CD and or DVD writer?

Have you got blank discs

Are the PC's on a home network?

clurbur

Erm... There's a dvd writer (i think), I can watch dvd's, play cd's and copy and burn stuff. I can get blank discs, but i'm not sure what you mean about the home network. My dad has a laptop in the same house and we all connect to the same internet. I'm sorry, I'm really not clued up on computer stuff.

santer_2

As it is less than 12 months old, will assume it has windows 7

When the other PC's are running. click start, click computer, if network is listed on the left, click that, give it a while, then, can you see the other PC's listed? You can also click start, then type network in the search box and press enter or OK

If yes, one option you then have is to transfer any files you need to keep to the other PC's then transfer them back when yours has been repaired

ridethelightning

I would buy an external hard disk, if there is alot of info on the computer you dont want to lose you should be doing regular backups anyway. Decide what size you need (250GB, 500GB, 1TB etc) then have a look on ebay, ebuyer, dabs etc. Western Digital or seagate make reasonable quality hard drives for a reasonable price, you should be looking at roughly 10p/GB ie £25 for 250GB, £50 for 500GB etc. Most will come with backup software which will do your backup for you, or you can just copy over any files you wish to keep.

You will be able to reinstall your microsoft software from the DVD, using the activation code, if you have lost this you will be able to retrieve it from microsoft.

scheming_gypsy

If they're just replacing the motherboard you could ask them why they're planning on reformatting your stuff......

You'll be able to re-install Office but you may have problems registering it if it's been installed 3 times... but you can call them and tell them you've had a system repair and you're re-installing..
With backing up; if depends what you need to back up. You can use: a networked computer, DVDs or CD's, an external hard drive, a USB pen, your mobile phone, a digital camera, your iPod etc. Just ask long as you have enough room, or you could find some online storage

S0litaire

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

If they're just replacing the motherboard you could ask them why they're planning on reformatting your stuff......

It's standard for some places to wipe the drive and install the original image that came with the laptop, that way they can check with their standard OS image and "burn-in"* software that the laptop is working fine!

Also it's a "cover their backend's" statement so if the laptop is lost in transit the owner can't claim for loss of data, only loss of the hardware (which is easier and cheaper to replace).

Most tell you to back up as they can't be responsible for security of any user's data, (i.e. they can't say for sure that no one will snoop a peek at your files) ^_~

*Burn-in is a program or set of programs that are run on the machine for 12 - 36 hours, it's puts different components under stress to test for any failures.

S0litaire

OK first thing is to check the size of your "My Documents" folder.

if it's less than 2Gb then you can use any of the free on-line storage products (spideroak / sky-drive / iCloud /DropBox)
if it's 2 - 8Gb then you might get away with a USB flash drive (though DON'T rely on it)
if it's +8Gb then an external USB drive would be the best bet.

Try running Windows own Backup program and see if you can save to the C:\ drive and see how big that file is! that would be the best way to find out how much data you need to save!

closed

what's the fault? does it boot?

take disk out, put it in a usb caddy, copy data to another machine, and preferably leave it out before sending it - check with the manufacturer first.

Im_just_careful

Microsoft have a super backup utility called "Sync Toy".

It is a free download from their website.

Install "Sync Toy"

Plug a USB disk into your laptop then setup source (laptop) and destination (USB disk) folders and run it.

Assuming you correctly identify where all your documents are you will have a secure backup.

If you keep this practice up regularly in future then any future PC problems will be less of an issue.

Hammyman

clurbur wrote: »

All my uni work so far is on it along with thousands of photos that I can't afford to lose, plus I have loads of websites saved for uni projects.

...yet obviously so important you can't be !!!!!d to back them up.

You would not believe how many customers I have who have stuff thats invaluable but apparently not enough to buy a £10 memory stick or a £30 external drive or even a 20p DVD to put a backup on.