Backup jitters

[johnthebaptist]

1. Running Office Standard 2007 on Vista Home Basic.
2. eMachine with one drive labeled DVD+/-RW / CD-RW. Right below that is
space labeled Expansion.

A square-one user.

3. I want to back up everthing that needs to be backed up, which I take to
be the whole updated operating system and all my personal stuff (probably
less than 50 MB).

4. I've started, and so far I've filled two 700 MG RW CDs with no end in
sight. I think I've lost one of the discs.

5. The directory for the backed up data puzzles me. It seems to list the
entire cosmos in various zip files B and C and all that. All I want to do is
find the personal stuff I backed up.

4. What is "Extract"?

5. Do I need to get a multi-gig flash drive or what?

Thanks for your help.

 

[DL]

IMO you would be better off with a dedicated third party tool
Personally I use Acronis True Image
You can either just backup your data files or you can Image the entire
system, which if neccessary could be used to resore your system

 

[johnthebaptist]

Thanks, DL.

I've downloaded the 15-day trial for Acronis True Image and am on the window
"Create Backup Wizard, Backup Archive Location."

On the disc now in Drive (E I want to put only the Word, Excel, and
Outlook files that are not already on it, but the "Next" button is
unavailable. This suggests to me a lack of sufficient space on the disc.

With some experimenting I've been able to "Send" two small Word files and an
Excel file to the disc. But how do I "Send" Outlook items to the disc?

 

[DL]

The only outlook file(s) you need are the *pst files
Likewise the only other Office files you need are the Data files - not the
program files

BTW On the MS Outlook site there is a free outlook backup addin, once
installed you can configure this to back up to eg the Documents Folder.
Then since your other Office data files should also be installed in the
Documents Folder it is only neccessary to backup the Documents folder in
order to grab 'all' your data

I thought TI had the facility to span disks (I use it to back up to HD's)
IMO you are better off using an external drive to backup to, cd's have a
small capacity

 

[johnthebaptist]

Much obliged, DL. Your reply gives me something to work on.

What I need now is a good glossary of computer terms ("Data files" -
"Program files" -*pst files* - "TI"?) and blog abbreviations (BTW - IMO -
BRB). Know of any?

Also, since I want to back up on removable media, what would be good: CDs,
DVDs, flash drive, external hard drive? The merits/demerits of each? I
don't have a lot of money.

 

[DL]

TI is Acronis True Image
*.pst files are the data files in which your Outlook mail msgs, Contacts,
Calendar, Tasks etc are stored in. ie all data (NB Outlook is a completely
different application to Outlook Express)
If you save a document in any office application it produces a data file, a
word data file being *.doc, an excel file being .*xls, usually they are all
saved to the Documents folder

In order to compare the cost of storage look at cost/megabyte generally the
larger the disk the cheaper the cost