No, it will not remove them.

There have been several threads on backup over the past year. In your case since you've purchased an external hard drive all you need is a program. Some have posted that their harddrive came with a program. If so, use it. There are relatively inexpensive programs available to backup your harddrive. What you really want to do is clone it. That is, make an exact copy. The program which I use is Acronis and its been satisfactory.

Bob

I would like to offer an alternative to Bob's idea. Using Acronis or Ghost can be an excellent idea for many people of course. I too have Acronis True Image - they were offering version 7 free as a promotion and I grabbed it. Then I wiped all 3 computers, reloaded all the programs and used Acronis to create a backup of each one. No idea if it will work, obviously is should but I doubt I will even try.

Somehow backing up an entire hard drive does not make too much sense to me. My usual method is to create a folder called Data then inside that create sub folders for each program (Word, XL, PhotoPaint etc) I use to create my 'stuff'. Then I use the options feature on each program to redirect all my files to the relevant folder as I create and save them. This way I need to simply go to the Data folder to backup all my 'stuff'.

Sure, all the programs are not protected but if ourguys has not wiped his hard drive in the 4 years he has owned it then it might be a bit messy. He could also be very meticulous but my point is my method is free and simple. I generally go about 2 years before I format and start over squeaky clean.