back up program

Rudy,

XP's backup program will not write directly to CD - just isn't written that way. There is a method of fooling it by using packet writing software like In Cd. By formatting a CD-RW in that program XP sees it as a drive and is happy, Snag is there is no way of spanning multiple Cd's.

I use Norton Ghost, which will span multiple CD's, but have yet to use it in anger - i.e. restore from it, except as a trial. As the name suggests it ghosts an image of the drive, from which individual files can be extracted, but it does not make incremental or differential backups - just the whole lot.

I keep all my data on a separate partition and that is automatically backed up daily to another hard drive using Karen's Replicator - www.karenware.com