external hard drive

[perose]

I have just taken delivery of my external hard drive to back up my work I have done on my computer. There is no instructions ! do I just plug it in and it will copy it or do I have to do something.? Please help !

[Rollo]

Plug in the power and connect it to your computer via a USB lead.

It should then appear as a new Drive with its own letter when you look at Computer, or My Computer.

THen you just have to copy and paste whatever you want to.

[perose]

can I copy and paste a whole programme?

[squarebear]

You shouldn't copy programmes but copy data. Your programs should have an original set up disk that would need to be re-run should your disk crash.

[Rollo]

You can copy any file, except some of the Windows system files.

[perose]

I have got my whole family tree on a programme, sorry to be thick but how can I copy the data?

[squarebear]

Say for example, you had Microsoft Word. You should backup all your Word documents but don't try to back up the Word program itself as it has to be installed properly to set up the registry entries and so on.

[squarebear]

There should be an option within the program to export data. What family tree software is it? FTW maker?

[perose]

thanks will have a go.

[perose]

The software is family tree maker

[squarebear]

In that case, see if has created any files in the directory you installed the program to. We use FTW and it has a directory called C:\FTW with files called something like smithtree.ftk. Back this directory up.

[perose]

thanks for your help.

[squarebear]

No problem. If in doubt, back up everything on your disk. It's better to back up too much than too little.

[perose]

Thank you so much for your help, I have backed up everything I am ever likely to need, don't know why I was worried about doing it . EASY when you know how !!