Referred from Malware Forum with regards to hardware problem

Hi Paws, Apologies for the late reply! I have re-formatted and almost got my PC back to the way it was,I just have to rip my music and I will be ready to back-up. I also will have to purchase acronis true image. Rather than use my 250gb external,I noticed that I only use about 20gb of my internal hard drive and was considering purchasing a 32gb external usb pen drive for this purpose(would that be okay or would I need a 300gb external to back up as my internal is 300gb or does it only go on the space used?). As soon as I purchase the gear I will get back.thanks for your patience and I appreciate your help!

Well done thats good to hear. If you are going to use Acronis, then if you use "normal compression" (that is the default then the image files create will be about 65% or so of the size of the stuff on the partition you are imaging… So your plan sounds good! You could also keep an extra copy on your external drive….( a bit of insurance!) The main thing is to make sure that once you have installed your Acronis, when you come to do the first image, (called full) that you have the removable media plugged in…. this will ensure that it appears on the destination drive list! Good luck Regards paws