Toshiba Satellite M115-S3094 User Manual - Page 226

226 If Something Goes Wrong Develop good computing habits Backing up your data to CDs with Windows XP The most valuable component of your computer system is the data that you create and store on its hard drive. Since problems with either hardware or software can make the data inaccessible or even destroy it, the next most valuable component of your computer system may be a recent backup of your data. Fortunately, Windows XP offers a convenient way to back up your important data files to CDs, a relatively high-capacity storage media. No additional software is required. Most of the CD and DVD drives built into recent Toshiba portable computer models can write to (or 'burn') as well as read from CDs. External CD and DVD writers are also widely available. Follow these steps to back up files in the My Documents folder to one or more CDs: 1 Put a blank CD-R (CD-recordable) disc into the computer's CD or DVD drive. 2 A menu of options will appear. Select Open writable CD folder using Windows Explorer, and click OK. 3 A Windows Explorer window will open for the blank CD. This window will be referred to as "the CD window." 4 Open a second Windows Explorer window by clicking Start, then My Computer. 5 In this second window, browse to the files you wish to back up. Click the down-pointing arrow at the upper-right of the window (to the left of the Go button) to see a list of locations that includes My Documents-a likely location of your data. 6 Drag and drop folders or individual files from this window into the CD window. If the files do not immediately appear in the CD window, press F5 (or click View, Refresh) to prompt Windows to display them.