Backing up data

[Martin]

does my windows xp system allow me to back up my file
data, so that in the event of a crash my data will not be
lost?
How do I perform this task. My system has both cd-
writer and a flopy disk drives.

 

[Norm]

Let me see now, you have a cd-writer and you have some file data you want to
backup. Seems rather obvious, don't you think? Or have you never used the
cd-writer and are asking for instructions?

 

[Jeffrey Struyk - MVP]

does my windows xp system allow me to back up my file
data, so that in the event of a crash my data will not be
lost?
How do I perform this task. My system has both cd-
writer and a flopy disk drives.

Since you've got a CD-R, forget about the floppies.

Are you wanting to back up just your documents, or the entire hard
drive? If it's just the documents, simply use your CD burning
software to save those documents to a CD.

If you want an entire system backup, the easiest option would be to
use some third party software like Norton Ghost or PowerQuest
DriveImage. These will not only save your files, but every bit of
info on your hard drive. If something goes wrong with your system,
you simply restore the entire partition from the image CD and you're
back up and running.

With CD-R media being so inexpensive, it's feasible to make routine
backups on CD media in this manner.

Hope this helps,
Jeff