Backing up your files under Windows XP

Find a workstation in Speare 5 that has a CD-R drive. These machines all have two CD drives. At this writing, machines speare5-1-2 and speare5-1-3 are so equipped. The User Consultant can help you find the right machine.

If the workstation is not in Windows XP, reboot it. From the Fedora login screen, click on the Reboot button along the bottom of the screen. From the “GNU GRUB” screen, select the Windows XP entry with the down-arrow or up-arrow keys, and press Enter.

Log in to Windows XP with your TCC user name and password.

Load a blank CD-R into the CD-R drive.

From the Start menu, select My Computer.

Select the files or folders you want to back up. If all your files will fit on a single CD-R, you can simply go to your U: structure and use Edit → Select All.

To back up selected files, navigate through your files and folders, using Control-click to select or unselect the folders or files you want to save.

Check to be sure that your backup will fit on the storage media. A CD-R will hold about 640 megabytes. To see how much space your backup will occupy, right-click on any of your selected files, and select Properties. You will see the number of files selected and the total space requirements. (This may take a few minutes if you have a lot of data.)

If you've selected more files than will fit, you will need to back them up in separate pieces. Reduce your selection, checking the space requirements with the Properties menu, until your selection will fit.

Now that you have selected the files and folders you want to save, select File → Send To. You will see a submenu showing all the places you can send the selected files. Select the CD-R drive from this menu; it will probably have a letter something like E: or F:.

Your files will be copied to a staging area before burning to CD. This may take a few minutes if you have a lot of data.

When your files are copied to the staging area for the CD-R drive, a balloon will appear at the bottom right corner of the screen saying “You have files waiting to be written to the CD. To see the files now, click this balloon.” If you are ready to burn the CD, click the balloon.

If you are not ready to burn the CD-R, you can always get back to the burn step by navigating back to the top-level My Computer menu and clicking on the icon for the CD-R drive.

In the window for the CD-R drive, assuming you have a blank CD-R in the drive, you will see an icon labeled Files Ready to Be Written to the CD. Under the CD Writing Tasks menu, select Write these files to CD.

A CD Writing Wizard window will appear. Edit the CD Name field to give your CD-R a name. Names can be up to 16 characters long and cannot contain any of the characters “\/:*?|<>”.

Click the Next button. It will take a few minutes to write the CD.

When the CD has finished writing, the drawer will open automatically. Click Finish on the CD Writing Wizard. Remove the CD and be sure to label it with a Sharpie or other permanent marker so you'll know what is on it.