Now that we've figured out what you're going to backup, it's time to figure out where to store the stuff. The first thing to do is to roughly calculate how large, in megabytes, these files are in total, and then you'll be able to figure out which type of medium is the best for storing these files. If you've copied all of the files into a directory like I had suggested earlier, simply select the directory under Windows Explorer and it'll tell you how large the files are in total. If you didn't copy them into one directory, or you couldn't, then you can just go through all the files and add them up manually.

Once you've figured out how big the files you're going to backup are, you should have a fair idea of where to store them on. Some common types of medium are CD-R/CD-RW (up to 650MB per disk), Zip (only 100 or 200 MB per disk), Super Floppies (can't remember the actual name, but can store up to 120 MB per disk), Jazz (up to 1 or 2 GB per disk), tape drives (usually gigabytes per tape) and other forms of removable mediums. If you don't have any of these, then I suggest you go and spend some dough to get one, as you'll find that they come in very handy, not just for backing up data, in the future. Of course, there's always my favourite way, either a separate hard drive or a separate partition on a hard drive. If you have a hard disk laying around and it has enough space on it for your backup files, then plug it in! Hard disks are great because the data transfer rate of it is faster than all of the fore-mentioned removable storage devices and also hard disk are the most reliable form of storage. Also, a very small-capacity form of backup medium would be the good ol' floppy disk, which can pack an incredible 1.44 MB! I'm sure 99% of you out there will find that using floppy disks won't work. =)

One other obvious way to pack all the files into these types of medium is to use multiple disks (duh!). For example, 2 CD-R's would allow you to store up to 1.3 GB, which should be plenty for the most of you.

I'm not going to go into how to actually copy your files onto these types of medium, as that is way out of the scope of this guide, but I can tell you to double check, and even triple check to make sure all the data is stored onto these storage mediums after you're done the actual copying process. One thing to avoid when backing up data is compression. Sure, you might be able to pack more data (sometimes twice as much), but if your medium gets damaged, or the compressed file gets damaged, you won't be able to access ANY of your data. If you don't use compression and your medium or some of your files gets damaged, at least you can still access the other files.

After you're done all this, go back and double and triple check that you have everything that you will need. If so, it's time for the fun part!

On to: Performing the Format