What to back up/ whatnot to back up

[ocalabarry]

Barry I want to back up my C drive to my D drive [300 gigs free]. I just want the important stuff, operating sys etc not all my vids, picts, music and docs as there already backed up.Last back up was 115 gigs. I only want the critical stuff. win7 64 bit home premium . thanks

[Bugkiller]

Hi,

If you have the back up of all your personal data like photos, videos, documents etc that's quite enough. You no need to back up the Windows folders as it will be pre installed when you re install the Operating System. If you have configured Email account in the Microsoft Outlook, you need to back up the mails back up file which will be in the .pst format and also if you have configured your email in Windows Live Mail or any third party email client, you need to back up your email storage files.

Thank you,
Admin,
PcBugKiller

[RolandJS]

Is your c-drive and d-drive partitions on the same physical HD? Or, do you have two twin HDs? Reason for asking: restorable backups are best placed onto a separate external HD. Personally, I use two ext HDs, each having at least one copy of OS and one copy of data partition images. Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image are just two of many excellent ExternalBoot backup/resstore programs.

[cbbvb]

If you don't want to backup the whole system, just some important stuff, why not try some free software to help you? I backup the whole system by using windows built-in backup & restore at first, but as time goes by, I found I have many new information to backup, so I looked help for aomei backupper, because it can clone single file and folders, that could save large storage.
We backup system in case of system crash, when it happens, we can use it to restore the system quickly. however, if the computer crash, you may can't boot it. ,so, why don't you put the system backup image to an external HDD?

[cbbvb]

if you want it bootable after restoring, I suggest you backup the whole C: drive.

[Phoebe]

hi, if you have alreasy backup your vids, picts, music and docs, you do not need to back up for the second time, it is waste of time and space, if you backup them again and again, I am afraid there will be no room to back up, you can choose different Backup Strategy for different data, for example, for the important files in system, backup them by way of a full backup, for other documents, choose differential backup or incremental backup, you can use the system backup software, choose different ways to back up, hope it helps.

Link: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/...p-software.htm