What should I backup ??

This may sound like a really stupid question but here goes....

I'm getting to the stage where I need to start seriously thinking about backing up my system.

But I don't have or want to buy a tape drive.

Someone suggested I buy a ide harddisk for the purpose of backups and I was going to buy one anyway so this could be good ....

I'm particularly fed up of when reinstalling w2k (after a reformat) that I then spend over a day reinstalling all my software (I have a lot of software).

Can anyone tell me what would I need to back up so that in the event of reformatting my harddrive (which'd wipe off the os), and reinstalling W2K, I'd be able to reinstate my software without reinstalling all my software all over.

I like to keep the OS and Software on seperate partitions (C: & S: respectively).

I also don't want to buy any backup software would 'Backup' (in Accessories - I think) - be good enough ??

Many thanks (and I hope my question makes sense !),

Jez

Jez,

If you buy an IDE drive for backup purposes only, then take a look at Ultrabac For Personal Use, http://www.ultrabac.com, this software allows you to backup your partitions/drives to tape/disk/jaz/zip.

IDE drives are cheap and big and Ultrabac For Personal Use is free!

Get Partition Magic and have a small partition for Win2k, and the rest of the drive for all your stuff. That way all your saved stuff will still be there. You will, however, have to install all the programs again after a reinstall of Windows. You should really consider something like a CD-Burner for backups to CD-RW too. That way if both drives manage to go you're not screwed over. You can get an 80GB Maxtor 5400rpm hard drive for around $300 USD. If you dont want to have to reinstall after a nice foul up of your system, so you're back where you were in a few minutes, you probably should consider RAID as alternative. Im not really too familiar with RAID, but if you dont want to reinstall all your programs, thats the best solution I can put up. Other wise you will end up reinstalling over your programs with the multiple partition method. If you dont want RAID, there is Norton Ghost, but Im not sure how well that does things, since some of the Norton line of programs excel in screwing up your registry, among other things.