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I just reinstalled Win xp (AGAIN) And lost all of my music and movie files
could someone please tell me the best way to store files before reinstalling
Win. Is there a way to store files online? Or should I use a floppy disk
and if so what kind,size etc... Thanks so much................
 
you cant get anything on a floppy disc, the best thing is to save them onto
cdr or dvd, dvd being better as you get far more storage, best not to store
them on-line as if the pc crashes and you cant get on the net you will be
stuck again, ;-) pete
 
Move the My Documents folder. Create another partition (divide the hard disk
into two using some third party software like Partition Magic and move the My
Documents folder there. That way you will keep all data after you formatted
your C:\ drive. You move it doing the following:
Right click on My Documents
Go to Properties
Under Target window you have 3 buttons, Restore Defaults | Move | Find Target.
Click on Move and point it to your D:\ drive. (if you have more drives, you
can choose any other).
Windows will move all your file to that directory and when you save file
from now on, they will always go to that folder.
Have fun, Paul
 
I just reinstalled Win xp (AGAIN) And lost all of my music and movie files
could someone please tell me the best way to store files before reinstalling
Win. Is there a way to store files online? Or should I use a floppy disk
and if so what kind,size etc... Thanks so much................
Click to expand...

How many movies do think you will be able to store on a floppy disk?

Buy a DVD writer or a large, external USB drive and backup your
important files at regular intervals.
 
Along with regular/verified Backups, you might consider segmenting your
setup. By this I mean creating & using separate partitions (drives) for the
storage of your personal data. Perhaps a partition to hold your My Docs,
email and similar. In addition a Multimedia partition to hold videos/music.
Takes more work at the outset, but long-term makes data management
easier. If you're interested in one additional benefit - having these drives
&
data on a 2nd physical disk will help XP from a performance stand point.
 
bambu456 said:
I just reinstalled Win xp (AGAIN) And lost all of my music and movie files
could someone please tell me the best way to store files before reinstalling
Win. Is there a way to store files online? Or should I use a floppy disk
and if so what kind,size etc... Thanks so much................
Click to expand...

There is no best way. But the worst thing to do is not have a full and
complete, current, backup. This should be done regularly.

There are several approaches. One is to use an imaging program. This
makes an exact image of the partition which can be saved on CD/DVD or to
another drive - internal or external. Imaging to an external USB 2.0 /
Firewire drive works well. Then occasionally burning an image to DVD
gives you redundancy. Restores can be done of the entire partition or
individual files / folders. These work well and make it easy to recover
from a drive crash. Examples of this are:

Norton Ghost 10
Acronis True Image
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
CasperXP

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's PC
BackUP or Sonic’s Backup MyPC. They are good tools. - and the evolution
of ntbackup. There are other good backup programs out there as well.
This can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to
DVD/CD and other drives.

Next is ntbackup which is installed in XP Pro but not Home. For Home if
you have the XP CD it can be found in the \MSFT\ValueADD\Ntbackup folder
as ntbackup.msi or download it from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

Ntbackup cannot backup to DVD and will only backup to CD if other 3rd
party CD burning software is available and even with that it will not
span CDs, i.e. one CD is the limit, which is not very practical. It is
geared toward tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in
backing up to an external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring
individual files / folders is ok, but if you need to restore the
complete drive it's cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you
have XP Pro, Ntbackup has an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery)
which makes this restore of a boot/system drive easier but still it
takes much longer than an imaging program, and I never got it to restore
my system to full functionality as it was when the backup was made. It
also mandates that a floppy drive be available. One floppy disk is
created in the ASR process and there is no way around that. ASR is not
available on XP Home addition.

Another is simply copying data files to a CD. Zip them up to make them
smaller if you want.

It's a good idea to partition the drive and keep data files in a
separate partition from the operating system and program files.
 
=?Utf-8?B?YmFtYnU0NTY=?= said:
I just reinstalled Win xp (AGAIN) And lost all of my music and movie files
could someone please tell me the best way to store files before reinstalling
Win. Is there a way to store files online? Or should I use a floppy disk
and if so what kind,size etc... Thanks so much................
Click to expand...

Archive them to a cd. A standard CD, not a rW
 
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