So i'm trying to learn from Eric's mistake (sorry to remind you, it's probably still a little painful) and back up my computer files (including music and pic's).
Is there an efficient (read: idiot prrof) way to do this? the Windows web site says that XP pro doesn't back up to CD RW (I learned this after erasing disks to make room, DUH)
I'm loathe to buy an external drive, or even a zip drive cause I would rather spend my money on beer (or back to school clothes)
Help please.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
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9 comments:
I didnt know that XP Pro is useless when it comes to backing up to a CD. I have plain ole XP and it does that just fine. I was also gonna suggest a zip drive, that would be cheapest and most worthy of your greenbacks.
I dunno......maybe Mark or Scott or Mr. Martin will chime in to help y ou out
and yeah, it is still painful at times to think of all the music I lost.
Peter, I think you are referring to article Q315255: "Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices". Under "Status", it says "This behavior is by design." Wonderful.
The suggested solution is to back up to a different media type. Another solution would be to buy a competitor's backup software, but of course Microsoft would never suggest that.
It's still possible to back up files without using Windows Backup or any special backup software, it's just that the specialized software has nice features where you can automate things, etc. If you have a lot of valuable data in a few directories on your hard drive, you can simply create a WinZip archive of those directories and then write the archive to CD. I'd go into more detail, but I gotta get to band practice now.
wht is this winzip you speak of
please go into more detail.
I think there used to be a free version of WinZip, but it looks like even the most basic version will set you back $30. Not terribly expensive, but not free. (link to WinZip website)
WinZip started out as the Windows version of the popular pkzip compression utility, which was shareware with a voluntary $25 donation. It will take a specified set of files, compress them, and put them all together in a single archive. For instance, you might have a directory on your hard drive that contains 100MB of data in 35 files. After "zipping up" the directory, the archive might be 40MB, and it's all in one file, which you can easily copy to removable media such as a CD.
If you'd rather not spend the $30 for WinZip, I've written a program that uses the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm, and I can give it to you for free... But you get what you pay for. The user interface is crap, and if a defect in my program causes you to lose your data, I can't help you.
well you sure did sell that.... thanks for the info, WinZip isn't part of Windows?
Nah, WinZip isn't part of Windows. In some ways, it would be nice to get useful utilities bundled with the operating system, but Microsoft has a reputation for mediocrity in this resepct.
Supposedly the next Windows operating system, Vista or Longhorn whatever they're calling it, will allow backup via CD or DVD, not that this helps you now. Download.com might have some software you're looking for. just run a search on "backup" at the website and it should pull some stuff up along w/ editor and user reviews. some of it costs money, some of it's freeware. I can't vouch for any of it, though, since I've never used any of them. good luck.
Broken Face..Pixies
I'm all for free trials and never registering it. It asks you for cash everytime you open it, but who cares. I think this is how winzip is currently set up because I've been using it for free for forever. I should really send them a dollar, but I'm cheap.
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