Nero will let you back it up in 4.7gb chunks.

Is there a limit to how much on your HD which can be backed up to a DVD in this way ? Is it just a matter of going into NERO and wanting to back up your whole C drive ?

As I understand it, Nero will split it across x number of DVD's (4.7Gb chunks), but as I said, I've never tested it to know

Chris

I have been and done it one LG dual layer all singing all dancing dvd r/rw and cd r/rw with nero express on a disc ( if it's not got backup on it I am sure they will update me.......for a small fee) it's installed now only have install software and away I go cleaned out the dirt and dust from the inside at the same time ...including the chip heatsink and fan ...............it's quieter now:D

The problem I see with buying a large hard disk is an old pc is unlikely to recognise all the drives capacity, or may not even see the drive. The bios will likely need upgrading to recognise anything larger than 20GB.

Unless you go the external or network-attached HD route.

NAS is usually a pretty expensive business solution but there are good cheapo options available these days, ranging from 50% up on a DVD writer to double or triple that price, some with backup software already included. So it's slightly more costly but you get instant, continuous, and readily available backups without the hassle of having to burn disks on and on and on, and keeping them filed systematically.

If your data changes daily, as mine does, a second (external) HD - either directly through USB, or network-attached through the router - is much more preferable. It saves me a lot of work, so well worth the price.

I've had a D: drive to put all "data" in, to ease the burden on the system hard drive c: Its worked quite well ,a dusing shortcuts haven't noticed the fact I have this other drive. Now I have a second PC on the network I have a duplicate in case c: or d: on the old machine crashes.

I think if c: had crashed with my old PC I could plug in the HDD to another system and the data would all still be there and readable...?

But, for a fresh start, I day go down the DVD route.

I'd go for a DVD writer too, Rob.

At the cost of blank media being soooo cheap, it just isn't worth bothering whether you need 2 of 3 discs to back up your 7 gigs

Also, I'd try and avoid using specialist "file formats" for backing up the discs like Ghost, DriveImage, etc because you'd then need those apps to read the files back. If you just burn the files you need to back up - word documents, photos, etc. And don't forget all your web favourites as a normal DVD, then you can read that disc in any PC without any software pre-requisites as long as the PC has a DVD drive of course.

Go with SVP or Novatech if you wanna keep Chris happy :P

OK

DVD r/rw installed .........software installed ....now for the questions (well you new it was coming didn't you) what is the normal recording format dvd-R...dvd-RW....dvd+r....dvd+RW.....dvd-ram....I have dvd+r double layer as well but I'll wait for the disc price to go down first before I use that!

and choices choices....Nero express comes with backup ....so.....apart from the obvious (word files. photos etc.) what should I back up.....bearing in mind I will be swapping over to this

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-NF435 later in the year with a new hard drive (reccommendations welcome) and maybe another 512mb memory....I don't use it for games so the graphics card I have now will be more than enough.

I think that's it for now...thanks in advance

There is no normal recording format and there are two competing standards +R and -R. For all you ever wanted to know (and probably a lot more ), check out www.dvdrhelp.com which is the DVD recorder's bible. As your player supports +R/-R recording, you can use either media - I tend to stick with +R's as I have (had :() a nice cheap supply of them, but essentially for file backup either should be fine. RW ones are just rewritable versions of the above.... Avoid DVD-RAM as I suspect your writer doesn't support it.....

I'm not sure how Nero backup works, but I'd imagine you just click the button and keep feeding blank DVDs until it says it's done? The other alternative is just to copy the folders you want to the DVD and burn them as you would a a CD.........

Hope that was some help

Chris

Hi Chris

The backup isn't automatic so it gives you a choice of what to add to it............ I think I will just put the whole hard drive on it for now and then back up word/photos/websites to another disc later on

The backup isn't automatic so it gives you a choice of what to add to it............ I think I will just put the whole hard drive on it for now and then back up word/photos/websites to another disc later on

The only advantage I can see of doing a proper backup over copying the files is that the backup should preserve file attributes - writing to a CD/DVD-ROM will make all the file Read-Only. Not the end of the world, and easy to change if you ever need to restore them Either way, no harm in backing up too much

Chris

After a combination of XP service pack 2 and Nero trashed my PC to the point it wouldnt even boot in safe mode I went out and bought another 160Gb SATA disk and a copy of Norton Ghost.

I'd reccomend it as its fire and forget. I've also split up my disks into logical partitions to speed up backups (also some areas need more regualr backups)

I now have multiple partitions both for data protection and performance (it take a bit of fiddling with the system settings) - If I fill a partition I'll eitherh housekeep or allocate some space from the Spare using partition magic.

Disk 0

C: 40Gb (operating system and program files)

G: Data 20Gb (basicall all theMy Documents and Shared Documents)

F: Spare 84Gb

S: Software 10Gb (downloaded software drivers etc)

Disk 1

Y: Swap 2Gb - putting swap file on a differet disk can up performance

T: Temp 15Gb - all temp files (inc temp internet files etc)

M: Music 40Gb - entire music collection (also held on my iRiver and anothr PC so not elplicitly backup up with Norton)

z: Backups 98Gb - location for Norton drive images