Awww, bless her heart. The walking is good for her to heal faster and hurt less, so its good she wanted her walk. I hope she does well, what a darling old lady she is. I laugh at my Whippets idea of "routine". I swear if I do something twice, to them its set in stone and we're going to do it that way all the time if its something they really like. hugs, Karen

backing up your files and data at the very least is very smart, should you have a hard drive failure or your data get corrupted you would lose it if it is not backed up, burning to cd is one way to do that, but getting a stand alone usb hard drive is another way. They usually have a large capacity so can hold a lot of stuff. I have a 500Gig seagate freeagent pro . you basically just plug it into your usb port on the pc and your pc will recognize it as another drive, you can then just move files back and forth to it from your pc. That makes is very easy to put all your pictures and stuff that takes up a lot of room on it rather than on your pc hard drive, keeping your pc less cluttered and easier to maintain. You currently have 22.2GB free left of the 39GB that is your hard drive. One reason you do not want your pc hard drive to get terribly full is that it can not run some of the stuff you want to be able to run for maintenance if it is too full for example a defrag, and setting system restore points. As to do you need one that would be up to you. I would say if you do not use some method of back up currently for your files and data then you should be. I use various methods, I have the usb hard drive, I also use thumb flash drives, cd and dvd and I have an online storage locker I can store stuff online. So hopefully if something drastic happens I can salvage the stuff that was really important. You can also get image programs that will take a snap shot of your entire hard drive including the operating system, you can store that image file on the external hard drive or flash drive, and from that you can quickly recreate your entire hard drive, I have Acronis True Image.

I'm assuming that you are making 'compressed' backup sets. Such a backup set is one large file that contains a compressed set of all the files chosen for backup. It has a special file structure. Keep in mimd that it is only one big file. Incremental backup stores only new-files and changed-files written since the last backup. You start with a full backup and then periodically do incremental backups. At some point, it is advisable to start over with a new full backup. Here's why. To restore a file set containing incremental backups, you have to start with the full backup set and then restore all incremental backups in the same order as they were written. In this way, all file revisions gets restored in proper order ending with the last version. Newer versions of a file overwrites the older version. A minor nusiance can appear. Old deleted files can reappear. For example, suppose you had file "A" and it was included in the first incremental backup. later, it was discarded and does not appear in later incremental backups. It will reappear while doing a full restore. A lot of folks do not use incremental backups, but do only full backups. Its less confusing, but uses much more storage space and time. I simplify my backups by not using a compressed backup set. I keep all my improtant data on one logical drive. Since I have a very large external drive, I merely make an ordinary copy of my data drive to the external drive. To enhance relibility (life) of the backup drive, it is turned off most of the time and turned on only for file copying. These days, RAID arrays is the popular way to maintain files. RAID has the advantage of automatically keepng duplicate files and can recover from a loss of one of the drives in the array. I'm not sure about the minimum number of drives required to gurantee a recovery from the loss of s drive.

Dee can - Please DO NOT trigger a Format. It deletes everything on the drive (including Windows). If you reformat your PC's hard drive, it'll be useless to you and won't start again until a new operating system installation is done. It shouldn't be something you need to do. raven - I disagree with your suggestion about the advisability of having a HDD image. Use of same would seem to be well beyond the ability of most people who visit this forum. To avoid problems and inconvenience, my first suggestion is that everything important should be backed up and, correspondingly, unimportant files needn't be backed up. Many users have nothing but unimportant files. A simple emailer and web surfer likely has nothing that needs to be backed up. My second suggestion is to avoid problems by using proper tools and practices. (Many of the tools and practices I've seen recommended in various threads in this forum I don't agree with) My third suggestion - if a problem is encountered that the user doesn't know how to deal with, find a service provider or someone knowledgeable to help you. For "seasoned citizens", younger family members may be useful for this. Write down on a piece of paper (yes, a piece of paper) the programs you use and the obscure websites you like and have bookmarked. Other than important data files (photos, music, correspondence), EVERYTHING ELSE on your PC can be reinstalled, re-downloaded, and otherwise replaced. If your PC is old, struggling, or otherwise deserving of a proper burial, buy a new one. They're cheaper than ever, and old your old PC may not be worth the cost or effort to resuscitate. Good luck to all. With a first rate antivirus program, all that's left for you to do is to know where you go and know what you open. With that and absent being very unlucky, you won't have any problems.