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As you may or may not know, my computer knowledge is limited. I got a little spooked when the computer said it blue-screened( had to look up what that meant and I'm not entirely sure if its a really bad thing) and I would really feel safe backing up my computer. It's got roughly 170 GB saved onto to it. I want to back it up on a physical hard drive and I was wondering, is there a certain type of hard drive I need to use? Do I buy a regular hard drive, connect it to my computer via USB, and just transfer? Or is there a different type of hard drive that I am unaware of? And, just another question that I can refer to later when I need to know, what usually does a blue-screen mean in terms of my computer's health? I go online and see a ton of explanations, but what typically is the reason for blue-screening? It did install update when I turned it back on, if that's the reason.

TopHatKat wrote:...I was wondering, is there a certain type of hard drive I need to use? Do I buy a regular hard drive, connect it to my computer via USB, and just transfer?

Yep. That's the way everyone does it.

TopHatKat wrote:what usually does a blue-screen mean in terms of my computer's health?

Something went wrong that's caused the operating system to crash. It's generally not the user's fault but the fault of a bug in device drivers or the operating system itself. Rolling back to stable drivers or upgrading to stable drivers can fix it. It may also be a hardware issue. I used to get blue screens on my old PC from playing stressing the video card a lot by playing games. The computer was fine otherwise.

Handy as well to get the stop code bits.
BSODs point mostly to hardware failure (memory faults are usually the first cab off the rank) but can also happen due to incorrect OS or BIOS configuration.

New question: if I backup my computer onto a flash drive of 64 Gb, can and should I make it into a zip file so it can fit? Computer has bout 150 Gb on hard drive, so if the compression rate is 5:1, I only need 30 Gb of space on flash drive. Am I correct on this? If so, I'll use this method.

I take it you're running Win 8?

Here's a preview of various backup options http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-safest-w ... ndows-7-8/

For many, how, what, and with what to backup has always been a conundrum.

Does Windows Backup give options on compression? Different files compress with different ratios. To compress/decompress 150GB to max/ultra would take hours. And then you have got to hope the restore works anyway.

What I do is this. I backup all the setup files of my Windows programs in on USB stick. Skyrim's easy because I have that on a Steam DVD. Oblivion is on another DVD
All the Skyrim/Oblivion mods in their pre-installed state go on another USB stick, along with the ini files and save-games.
All the pics, docs, passwords, browser links and other user files on another USB stick.
If my OS Drive goes, (all my games are on another HDD anyway) all that needs to be done is install Win from the DVD, and configure all the programs. Yes, a lengthy process, but much better than the backup/restore not working,

In your case, it's better to create and copy files to the appropriate directories on the flash drive.
This would be my preferred method, because program (and mod) install files are compressed anyway.

I have windows 7 professional. Does this make a significant difference?

Yes, probably more the case than ever for doing a manual backup.

But there are a lot of good disk imaging/ backup/restore programs around, but there doesn't appear to be an OEM standout:

http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-resto ... lease.html

If you don't want the detail of the manual backup, Windows Backup may be the best for Windows 7 Pro.
Keep the flash connected so scheduled incremental backups can continue. The acid test is in the Restore.

Although I plan to back up the entire computer, I am more concerned about files such as word, power point, and our images we have put on it. Zipping won't cause any major problems, correct? I don't really have any programs that I really care about enough to go through Imstearn's method and I'm not very tech savvy. I'm just looking a simple method of making sure everything is, for the most part, safe.

EDIT: I was too stupid to understand that all I had to do was copy and paste the files and documents I wanted over to the flash drive. I'll do a full backup if I feel like it in the future. 80% of the stuff on this computer is junk anyways. 90 Gb of my brothers backup is on here...and he moved away months ago with his computer. Thanks anyway for the advice.