Hi, I been there too,,,,,It's hard at first,,,,now I use another program to backup than those mentioned here so I will add yet another alternative. I too use another 250 meg external drive that connects via USB. I keep this drive in a cabnet till I am ready to use it. If I get a virus or have a major HD failure. I just put in a new drive or boot the old one with a backup CD and tell the program to repartition the HD and and reinstall my backup. Then an hour or so later I have everything back exactly as it was. This includes XP with serial number (no calls to MS) All my software fully functional,activations included,right where they were. The Program that makes this possibe is Acronis True Image at Acronis.com It works! Glenn Grace