Vista - Where may I find "basics of getting started" for backup?

Assuming my system has a 100 GB drive, of which the usual space is for Vista
Home Premium, and the rest of a 10 GB manufacturer (DELL) installed recovery
partition and the rest for user files, what size external drive should I be
using for backups?

From reading the posts and documentation, I understand the "first backup" is
"complete" and then following are incremental until backup determines it is
time to a "complete" again (using the decisions decribed in the flowchart in
this discussion group).

I've a "spare" 200 GB Seagate. Will this do?

How can I set up to have "duplicate" backups so that I can have one local
and one offsite?

Sorry for these very basic questions but I was not involved in the beta of
Vista and so am starting from a newly delivered laptop with Vista Home
Premium installed.

Daniel

"DanielLipkie" wrote:

> Assuming my system has a 100 GB drive, of which the usual space is for
> Vista
> Home Premium, and the rest of a 10 GB manufacturer (DELL) installed
> recovery
> partition and the rest for user files, what size external drive should I
> be
> using for backups?

As big as you can properly afford. There is no such thing as any hard drive
that is too small.

> I've a "spare" 200 GB Seagate. Will this do?

Nicely.

> How can I set up to have "duplicate" backups so that I can have one local
> and one offsite?

Someone else needs to answer that one.

[...]

Ken

"DanielLipkie" <DanielLipkie@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote

> Assuming my system has a 100 GB drive, of which the usual space is for
> Vista
> Home Premium, and the rest of a 10 GB manufacturer (DELL) installed
> recovery
> partition and the rest for user files, what size external drive should I
> be
> using for backups?
>
> From reading the posts and documentation, I understand the "first backup"
> is
> "complete" and then following are incremental until backup determines it
> is
> time to a "complete" again (using the decisions decribed in the flowchart
> in
> this discussion group).
>
> I've a "spare" 200 GB Seagate. Will this do?
>
> How can I set up to have "duplicate" backups so that I can have one local
> and one offsite?
>
> Sorry for these very basic questions but I was not involved in the beta of
> Vista and so am starting from a newly delivered laptop with Vista Home
> Premium installed.

You don' need to image the DELL recovery partition do you? That's a choice
you need to make. Sure a 200 GB drive should do fine. Create the backup
and then copy it to another media for off site storage or create two
backups, one after the other to two different devices.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]