[rocks.in.my.shoes]

I'm considering formatting my hard drive. It has been suggested to me a couple times on this board after posting about problems I have been having. Plus, I would just like my PC to run smoother. My question is, how should I go about backing up all of my files?

[supersloth]

cd-r's.

[Acid Reign]

cd-rw's are better, in case you want to do it again later, you odn't have to use new CDs and have to reburn 90% of the same files because you've made changes, added new ones, etc...

also, you could (harddrive space permitting) back it up on a new partition, format the old one, put all your stuff back and erase the new one?

i usually back my stuff up on my dads computer over the network, pretty easy, but slow for moving it back and forth

[supersloth]

I find that cd-rw's just aren't worth the extra cash in general. partitioning is good, sometimes it fucks your drive letters up though, ex, your windows and program files will be on D:\ instead of C:\

[jaredigital]

supersloth, on Jan 12 2004, 01:49 AM, said:

I find that cd-rw's just aren't worth the extra cash in general.

indeed. and, depending on what kind of computer you bought, all the essentials for your CD-RW software may not fully restore from a restoration disk or your Windows installation CD. i had this issue with my Dell... when i reformatted and began restoring data, i could use my CD-W drive to read the restoration CD-R's, but since my Adaptec software wasn't loaded yet it couldn't read CD-RWs until AFTER the OS was restored. If you back up essential files like drivers and such, do it on CD-Rs, or you might be screwed...

This post has been edited by jaredigital: 12 January 2004 - 07:27 AM

[hitokirisn]

I use a combo of cd-r's and hd space. Basically I have my docs on a seperate 80gig drive with room to spare and XP and linux on another 80 gig, so i move files i need to my documents 80 gig. And since you're starting over anyways, it wouldnt hurt to allocate 3 or 4 gigs as a backup partiton.
I love my 50 disk spindles

[Cookie Mobster]

I just have a 5 gig partition with my OS and keep everything else on another partition, never have to backup during OS installs, just backup the H_COMP/Software registry entry and reinstall then import the registry clip and good to go, no need to even reinstall software.

[caffinephreak]

CD-RW's are cheap as hell now, and if you got one, a USB key thingy works awesome (depending on the key me thinks)...but I just bought a CD-RW 25 spindle for like $20 afta mail-in-rebate (they rape you on em if you don't send it in though) Super nice, but like jared said, be careful on the critical files/your hardware, and cd-r's are cheap as water nowadays, so its not a big deal to waste a few for a nice, clean, faster comp IMO

and everyone here has a good way of doing it, when i built my gf's comp, i just used an old 4gb hdd for the system crap, and set it to back up once a week to a seperate partition on the 80gb hdd (she was super paranoid about it)...thats probably a bit overboard, unless you're paraniod like her that is

This post has been edited by caffinephreak: 19 February 2004 - 11:28 PM

[Thorian]

do you have a network that you could map a drive to R:

If so then this program will search for office documents pdf's email

You will still have to manually back up mp3s pictures and your favorites folder though

unless someone wants to try and re write it

it calls a Inifile but I nolonger have access to the source

Attached File(s)

•  wsbackup.exe (140K)
  Number of downloads: 10

This post has been edited by Thorian: 20 February 2004 - 12:28 PM