thanks JC. sounds interesting. i ll def. give it a try.

Well Nancy, essentially, your main problem seems to be backing up your hard disc (C) onto your external drive. An excellent program to solve that problem would be to download 'Acronis True Image 11.0' which would cost you about $40. However, I would recommend that you look at the http://www.xxclone.com website. From there, on the download page, there is the facility to download the FREEWARE edition of the xxclone backup program. It has a very user-friendly set up wizard and even allows you to make the cloned copy of your hard disc bootable from the external drive. I've recently started using xxclone and I have to say it is absolutely brilliant! It even allows you to undertake future back ups incrementally ie. it doesn't have to fully back up the whole C disc each time - but simply adds back ups of any new programs which you may have subsequently downloaded. Give it a go Nancy - it may even transform your life!! :)>

Love, Light and Peace

JC

fine. i will see what i ll do about it then.

I can find some articles that explain this - but I would recommend you track down your local geek (not sure if they list in the phone book) - and ask "if they did it for you, would they mind if you watched and they explained what they were doing"?

Alternatively you can do a bit of reading beforehand - and have "the geek" sit beside you while you do it - explaining what you are doing and why, before each step. They can give you feedback in case you are about to do something wrong or "the long way".

Either way - rebuilding a PC (especially when it involves repartitioning and data backups) is always better to have someone experienced nearby - and definitely for your first attempt.

Experience also helps in knowing where applications store their data, and how to back it up, What you can ignore backing up, what can be just reinstalled. This is something you "learn" after a few rebuilds (and forgetting to capture settings or files before formatting).

Your idea of "just give it to someone who knows about all this stuff and let him do it" might get the job done - but you know your programs and data better than anyone. Finally just handing it over - when you get it back, you STILL won't know anything "about all this stuff". Of course that's not always a problem - some people don't WANT to know about "that stuff".

thx bubby. will read it later.

bubby, i have an 80 GB Hard drive capacity laptop. however, my C drive is ony 15 and my D drive is 65 Gb.

My C drive on which all of my programs are installed is low on space now. i ve installed one CAD program which consumed about 8 GB plus and that was only one program.

i want to back-up everything such that i dont lose any of my data or programs and format my computer and partition it so that both drives i have are divided equally. 40 by 40.

i have a 500 GB external hardrive to do so.

do you have any recommendations and articles to read in order to do so? i havent formatted a computer in my life. i dont even know what command i need to perform if from using DOS. Do i need to install windows all over again from the CD, or the windows backs itself up on my external hard drive during the back-up operations?

or should i just give it to someone who knows about all this stuff and let him do it?

Take a quick tour of a PC rebuild of Windows from repartitioning the hard disk, data backups, media players, download managers, office suites, anti-spyware - all of it freeware.

This article gives examples on how to do practically any function on Windows using only freeware software. (nb. Windows XP or Vista not included)

Read the Article