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Newbie needs some very basic backup advice

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I've just installed True Image Home 2011 trial version for evaluation. I'm struggling a bit with establishing how I need to set up the backup regime as I don't find the manual totally explanatory (for an old silver surfer like me). My backup needs are as follows: 1. all my data, 2. my Vista o/s and 3rd party programmes so that in the event of corruption or whatever. the PC can be returned to an earlier condition, and 3. in the event of total system or hard drive failure I can recover the total contents of my PC on another drive or machine... all pretty much what most people want, I suppose. My PC has a single unpartitioned hard drive and the backup is placed on an external HD via USB. So far I've run 'My system' and 'My personal data' backups and produced the bootable media CD. Here's where I become confused - do I also need to do a Partition backup (C), or should I have done the latter instead of the 'My system', or what...? I've so far used up 88Gb space on my external HD. Also would incremental or differential backups be better for me? Any help with the above will be extremely appreciated!

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I'd keep it simple, at least to start out with. do a Full only backup of the entire disk (disk mode). This will create a backup file at your target location that can be used to resotre the entire disk, OS, system files, programs, everything.

In File mode create a full backup for the My documents folder and subfolders. This should capture all your data file. If you keep any in a diff directory, then check off that directory too when you select the filles/folders to beack up.

 

Keep as many backup files as you can with the space you've got (sometimes an older backup is bettert than a newer one).

Create your backup tasks when the target directory (the location you are backing up to) is empty. Let the tasks run on schedule or always manually backup. Once you're totally comforatable with the above, you can later trying doing incs or diffs, but its a layer of complexity you don't have to deal with.