- 1). Click the "Start" button, select "Control Panel," then click "Back up your computer." Under "Back up files," select the "Back up files" button.
- 2). Select "On a hard disk, CD or DVD" to back up to removable media. Choose the desired drive from the drop-down list. If you wish to use a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive, insert a blank recordable disk in the drive. If you want to use an external hard drive, make sure the drive has sufficient free storage space, attach it to your computer and select "Refresh" from the drop-down list before continuing.
- 3). Select the drive you'd like to back up. Your system drive is selected automatically. You may uncheck any drive, such as a recovery partition, that you don't want to back up. Click "Next."
- 4). Leave the boxes checked to back up files such as pictures, music, videos, email, documents, TV shows and compressed files. Uncheck the box beside each type of file you don't want to back up. Click "Next."
- 5). Select a schedule for your automatic backup, if prompted. Beside "How often," choose "Daily," "Weekly" or "Monthly." If you choose "Weekly" or "Monthly," choose the day to create your backup beside "What day." Then choose the time beside "What time." Click "Save settings and start backup." Windows Vista will now create a full backup of the desired files.
- 6). Open the location of the original files in Windows Explorer once your backup is complete. To do this, click the "Start" button, then choose the desired folder from the Start Menu, or click "Computer" to navigate to another folder. Press SHIFT and click to select contiguous files, or press CTRL and click to select non-contiguous files. Click "File" and then "Delete" to remove the files.
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