Backing up a computer

Can someone explain to me how to do this? I just spent a lot of money on a new laptop a few months ago, and figure I should learn how to do a back up.

any help is appreciated.

 

Well, firstly you need an external harddrive to store your backed up data on. Secondly, you need a method of backing up. Personally, I use SyncBack, which synchronises my folders with their backup folders. It's useful if you know what you're doing.

 

Ok, I have the external hard drive, but everything you said after that makes absolutely not a bit of sense. =/

I am a bit of an idiot when it comes to computers.

 

There's a few ways to go about backing up. I'll start by clarifying that backing up isn't necessarily a term used to talk backing up your files one certain way. One way is to actually back up everything on the computer, all your windows files and everything. Personally I'd say only backup files you cannot replace or cannot replace easily. Don't bother backing up your windows applications, or basic windows files because hey, if everything goes wrong, just reinstall them again, no big deal. The stuff you're looking to backup would be your files that you've created or downloaded.

I look at it this way. If my computer totally crapped out today and I lost EVERYTHING on the hard drive, and I had to reinstall windows, what files would I be pissed off about losing? Those are the ones you want to back up. Music, documents, videos, anything like that. And you can do that by just copying and pasting onto your external hard drive. It's a lot simpler than what you're thinking.

 

If you use linux and will not have internet connection at one point back up the entire Hard Disk. Or use the ApponCD feature if you have it. If windows just backup the important things not all your applications. Basically what Neil said.

 

Probably not using linux considering it's a new laptop, and she looks like she's not to familliar with some computer stuff, so I think linux is out. So if this confuses you Jen, just ignore it

 

Thanks everyone. I am going to go with Neil's suggestion. =)

 

you may also want to look into online storage. but the safest way to back things up is on a disc, external drives fail just like internal ones.

 

Online storage generally fails because most ISPs have shitty upload speeds, so it'd take you forever to backup 100gb of data online.