Back up.

atro1

Ok late as usual! I have not backed anything up and with the latest problems feel I ought to. Heck of a lot of imformation on the hard drive.
Now if i buy this Seagate 500gb External Portable Usb 2.0 Hard Drive, how do i transfer all files over to it. Surely not one at a time.I really could do with all the pc's hard drive going onto the portable.
Have a Vostro 200 running Vista. Many thanks.

TakeThis

Backup Software

Vista has it's own Windows Backup and Restore Center, though you can try something like Macrium Reflect Free.

Others may have their own free recommendation. I use a 'paid for' Acronis product.

arriva

also Aesus Todo Backup is good which is free and used to look very much like Acronis. Also GFI is a good option.

Once installed these software normally let you syncronise your backup so they replace only the new files or the files that have been modified since the previous backup session. This saves a lot of transferring and overwriting files unecessarily.
If working with an external hard disk you want to make sure it gets assigned the same drive letter everytime.

closed

maxblast is a version of acronis for seagate/maxtor drives.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

http://www.runtime.org/shadow-copy.htm

I suggest also burning a copy or two of the most important data to dvd.