backup pc

I am running W2K Pro and need to back up my system (my docs, pictures, etc)
Can someone tell me how to do this.
Thanks in advance.

Where/what do you intend to back up to? Different hard drive? CD-R? Tape? To another computer on the network?

I would like to back up the information on a Cd-R.
Thanks,

OK well that rules out the built-in backup program then. If you want to schedule the backups then you'll have to buy a 3rd party app. Dantz Retrospect has a good name. Or possibly some one will know of a freeware or shareware one.

If you're not bothered about sheduling then just use your CD burning program in the normal way and do it manually - it works for me.

Hi,

If you want to use CD-R/W for backup then invest in a program like Drive Image 2002 that lets you compress your boot partition image by around 60% and write that data to CD Media which is very usefully bootable in the event your PC wont start... and otherwise recoverable under a simple console for regular backup/restore options.

You can fit about 1.5Gb onto a single 650Mb CD-R/W or span a back up image across 2/3/4 optical disks if necessary... final size depends on what programs and data your bootable partition contains and, as with ZIP utilities - some files compress more than others by design...

I back up my W2k partition regularly (and always keep an original copy of a fresh installation with the necessary drivers on CD-R in case of disaster...) - some tips to keep image size down would be to place your e-mail messages onto a second HDD partition and define the store directory in your e-mail client, back up WAB and Favorites to the 2nd partition, and keep original downloads on the 2nd partition...

You can also use DI2002 to backup your second partition to CD media as well :-)

Drive Image works with NTFS/FAT32, will let you partition your hard disk according to how you want to back-up (you might only wish to back up partition C to partition D and not use CD-R/W media at all... but CD-R/W media is made bootable which is quite important!)

There are other imaging programs from Norton and various third parties, but l know of no renowned freeware versions... but try ebay for a used copy and it'll cost you only $15 or so...

Backup writes/restores take about 15 min's per CD, but if you use a hard disk location you can do it three times faster...

Any help?

If more people thought about backup before it was evident they got a virus or hard disk/system corruption then many forums would carry significantly fewer numbers of posts!

Ivanothername (except you're not having it)

Thank you all for your help

I seem to be having a backup problem as well. I have too much data to do a full backup, so I select just the nessasary things; but the backup program that comes with 2K keeps backing up everything anyway.

Is that something that's fixed with service pack 4? or am I having some other kind of problem?

Thanks,
Tsume