How do I best clean my Lap Top without damaging it?

How do you back up a Lap Top?

• I really know next to nothing about backing up a Lap Top. I'm planning on buying an external Hard Drive from the store to back up ALL my data and important information, videos, movies etc. from my lap top to the hard drive once a week incase the laptop breaks or something. Can you please tell me everything I will need to know to do this, and just any general information, the more the marrier! And please don't just copy/paste the info from a website =D. I know this is a broad question but that's because I don't know much about this stuff. I have a MacBook Pro 10.5.8, It's total "Capacity" is 150gb and there is 50gb worth of space left on the computer. My goal is only to back up this information just incase my lap top ever breaks or gets stolen because my LIFE is on my laptop. I am planning to buy two external Hard Drives to be safe. This is what I think I know, how I believe it all works, and the best way to do it - please correct what I have wrong: So, all I do is go to the store, buy an external hard drive about 500 gb right? Someone said 1T is too much for a laptop, that it's "Dangerous", someone who does know about computers mind you. So anyways once I buy it, I simply connect it to my computer through a "firewire" instead of a usb since firewires are faster, (someone said) and I do this once a week to back up all the data from the lap top to the external hard drive and Presto! That's it right? Anything else I should know about all of this? please help, all answeres appreciated thank you!

• Answer:

  It is always good to back up every file you are working with on a computer. And having backup files in different medias is the best method which guard you from losing data. To be safe you must backup your files on External Hard disks, DVDs and CDs. And put them at different places. There are online storage services where you can store your files and access it from anywhere. However, you should know the company well before doing so. There are several ways to back your laptop hard drive, the simplest way is the COPY and PASTE method. You just select and COPYthe files and PASTE them on the external hard disk. To speed up the copy process you can use Windows built-in back up methods or other free backup softwares. If your laptop operating system is Windows XP, you can access the backup wizard by pointing to:- All Programs ---> Accessories ----> System Tools ----> Backup Before doing the back up, you have to know which files to copy. Arrange your files in folders so that later on you can't miss which is which. Remember: you only backup the files you have created and work with. No need to back up programs and applications, even though you backup it doesn't work. If your laptop fails, you can easily recover Program files and other drivers using the recovery CD that comes with your laptop. Hope this will help a little