Being in the P.C. repair business I am often asked this. So I will show you step-by-step how to use Windows XP’s built in backup utility.
If you are using Windows XP Professional Edition skip to step 6. If you are using Windows XP Home Edition you need to install the utility from the XP cd.
Note: If you are backing up your data to a drive that is formated with the FAT32 file system you are limited to a 4GB file size. Therefore if you have more then 4GB of data to backup you need to convert your FAT32 drive to NTFS. To learn how to do that click here.
To do this follow these instructions:
1. Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive and, if necessary, double-click the CD icon in My Computer.
2. On the Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP screen, click Perform Additional Tasks.
3. Click Browse this CD.
4. In Windows Explorer, double-click the ValueAdd folder, then Msft, and then Ntbackup.
5. Double-click Ntbackup.msi to install the Backup utility.
6. Click “Start” -> “Run”. In the run dialog box type “ntbackup” Click “OK”
7. You will see a screen similar to the one below. You only have one option. The first thing we need to perform is an incremental backup. To start the incremental backup click the “Next” button.
8. On the next screen since we are backing up our files and not restoring them click the “Next” button.
9. On this screen we will choose what to backup. Backing up the “My Documents and settings” will work for most users. If you have specific needs you can choose “Let me choose what to backup” and pick the exact folders that you want saved.
10. Next we specify where to save the backup file. I would suggest an external hard drive to save your file to. USB flash drives are to small for a lot of people and not as reliable as a USB flash drive. If you have EXTREMLY important data you may look into a RAID array.
11. On the last sceen we confirm the settings and click “Finish” and your computer will begin to backup your data.
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