How do I back up my personal files?

[kuma]

How do I back up all of my personal files, emails, addresses, music, and the such? I'm trying Resuce and Recovery, but I don't think this is right.

[GomJabbar]

You can use Rescue and Recovery to back up your entire hard drive to an external hard drive, network drive, DVD+-R's or CD/R's. It will take a few DVD's or a number of CD/R's.

As an alternative, you can copy your music files directly to CD's using any CD burning program. Sonic Record Now! is included in the factory install and it will do this. You can copy other personal files to a USB key. Just make folders on the USB key to keep everything organized. This is not a full backup strategy, but it is handy. I consider it extra insurance.

[davidspalding]

I forget whether it was RnR, or the Windows backup utility, but I thought that I saw that one would back up "only my user files" ... basically, all the good schtuff under c:\docoments and settings\%username%\ . Unless you keep your music and stuff in an unorthodox place, just backing up all under c:\documents and settings\ will do the trick. You could actually just do that with WinZip (which I recommend, even for purchase - it's a good little app).

Aside from music, it ought to fit on a DVD-RW (using the Sonic DLA utility, you could zip, or just straight copy). Music ... well, that's what 300 GB USB drives are for.

[FRiC]

There's also the System Migration Assistant which seems to do what you want...