Preserved Topic: First time format

I've got my new CD burner installed, so I want to back up my C drive and then format. This is the first time and doing this and wondered if you guys could warn me of any pitfalls I should be aware of.

Thanks

Well i recently just did this a month or two ago for the first time as well.

If you are using CD-RW's, i'd recommend using Nero or sumthin similar to do the writing cause u dont want packet written RW's for backup, it could mess you up having to install a packet reader first plus its just a pain in the ass.

Spend like a week going through everything backing up anything important, common sense really. Dont do what i did and forget to back up yer favourite fonts, sum can be quite hard to re-locate.

If you dont feel that u dont quite know what yer doin, id say get a freind who has done this before to help ya out.

thats about it. Good luck!

EG

What el said... especially going through "everything"... this is not a *rush* job. Then... if you haven't already thought about it... and depnding on the size of the HD.... 'paritioning ' for me, at least, has been a life saver more than once.

Don't rush it.... and good luck!

Yeah, Do your backup before you format the HD.....


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There are a few things that you should have in mind. First one is that filenames on CDs (joliet standard) can contain maximum 96 characters (and since you're doing backup, you might have some files with very large names, like mp3s or similar). Also, according to ISO standard maximum path+filename length must not exceed 256 characters (again, since you're doing backup, you might have some crazy folder structure that goes very deep) and not all burning applications will allow you to exceed this limit (path+filename length limit, joliet limitation still remains). And last but not least, you should use Nero Burning Rom to burn your CDs, because it is *the best* burning software available...

Thanks for the input guys

I plan on backing up the whole drive. I figure I got about 4-5 gigs of stuff on it, and I just bought 100 CD-R's. Lucky for me Nero came with my CD Burner, but so did a few other programs that I could use. I wouldn't have known anything about the packet business, and I'm not sure Nero would have been the one I used, but it will be now!

Thanks for the warning on the path+filename bit mr. maX, I don't think I have any file structures that go that deep, but I'll take a closer look at it.



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Only thing I forgot the first time I re-formatted was to back up my bookmarks. some of them can be hard to relocate, too.

Butcher, I forgot to mention that Nero will warn you if there are any Joliet and ISO incompatibilities...

Thanks mr. maX, that makes me feel better to know.

Docilbob,

That's a great thought. It's definitely not something I would have thought of.... but boy would I have been pissed if I lost them!

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