reinstall XP: backup Docs and Settings folder?

[Lee]

I'm planning a reformat of my C: partition and reinstall of Windows XP. I'm
in the process of backing up my critical data on my D: partition. Question:
what parts of "C:\Documents and Settings" do I need to back up? Each member
of my family has a user account (i.e. 3 accounts), but there appear to be a
number of folders which are common across users. The Docs and Settings
folder is almost 3Gb
in size. So do I really need to back up all of this folder? If not, what
parts would you consider critical?

Thanks,

Lee

 

[vish]

I would copy the whole lot. Problem comes in where
everyone has saved stuff. Should all be in My documents or
All Users\shared documents. But people have a habit of
saving onto the desktop, so you would want to copy
those.Also Favourites folders if they have internet
favourites.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I'm planning a reformat of my C: partition and reinstall of Windows XP. I'm
in the process of backing up my critical data on my D: partition. Question:
what parts of "C:\Documents and Settings" do I need to back up? Each member
of my family has a user account (i.e. 3 accounts), but there appear to be a
number of folders which are common across users. The Docs and Settings
folder is almost 3Gb

By far the largest part of it will be all the individual users' "My
Documents" and so on - which you will *have* to back up. Aside from
that, the other significant amount of storage may be stuff relevant to
data storage for applications - eg Encarta will have any updates stored
in the All User section. But all of that put together is not likely to
be more than about 100MB in your 3GB