Hey, I was wondering if someone could help me with this, if possible. I'm completely ignorant of DOS, and I'm looking for the CODE that will BACKUP all files on my COMPUTER to either a CD or external harddrive, using DOS code. There's quite good help for this elsewhere on the site, but I'm not sure what "directory" NAME I should use. Basically, it's everything in "My Documents" that I'm looking to back up. Apologies for asking something so basic, but I'd greatly appreciate any help anyone could give me. Thanks very much.Just wondering why you don't just drag My Documents to your backup drives. A lot quicker that DOS.

Mac
The computer's gone wonky, I think is the technical term, and the only thing that works anymore is DOS.Good answer!

OK, do START CMD
(or START COMMAND)

Then do CD until you reach "My Documents"

then do
copy *.* E:

(This assumes E: is the drive where you want your backup. Use whatever letter is assigned)

Mac
If you have an external drive that is E:, you would want:
Code: [Select]xcopy c:\ e:\ /e /h /k /c /d /yBy"all files" do you mean just document files or ALL FILES on the machine INCLUDING Windows, so you can reinstall it? If the latter, it will not work. If you want to back everything up this way and then reinstall Windows and copy back any non-program files that would be OK.

Windows and any programs would have to be reinstalled from CD.

That's great, thanks very much. I'm just looking to backup the document files, not the operating system and programs. I won't have access to the computer til next week, but I'll try what you all suggested. Again, thank you. Good luck.For document files you could use
Code: [Select]xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\" e:\ /e /h /k /c /d /y
And I would also recommend skipping temp files. You can do this by creating a file called exclude.txt with
\temp\
\temporary internet files\
Then use the command
Code: [Select]xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\" e:\ /e /h /k /c /d /y /exclude:exclude.txt