Backing up Documents and Settings folder

[Avastfan1]

Dear Forum,

Am I able to simply manually backup a 'user' folder (c:\documents and settings\'avastfan'\) using copy and paste (to the external hard-drive)?

There's around 8GB of data in this user folder. How can I be sure that every single file in that folder has been copied?

I don't really want to download any backup programs or use any M$ Wizards.

Thanks in advance!

Avastfan1

[bob3160]

Compare the size of the back-up to the original.

[Shiw Liang]

The backup is more light that the real one and it is only one folder!

[Hermite15]

@ avastfan1: if you don't have a third party solution, just use the native XP backup software, it's really good, and it will allow you to backup exactly what's needed for a further restore, while if you do that manually, many files in use won't be accessible, so won't be copied at all. Windows backup uses "shadow copy" to circumvent the issue, and if I remember well, it's very well done in XP. Might be an M$ software as you say  , but that's your only solution.

ps: if you wanna check anyway what's been copied when you did it manually, use SyncToy (careful that's M$ too...boo..evil  )
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en

[DavidR]

The backup is more light that the real one and it is only one folder!

Where do you get this from
Please read the post before dropping in totally out of the wild replies.

Using a simple 'copy and paste' as the OP mentions there is no file compression so the size would be the same.

There wouldn't just be 1 folder if you copy a folder it should copy its contents and sub-folders and their contents. This however, may run into difficulties if a special folder is to be included (the xp backup as Logos mentioned should get round that, then again that wouldn't be classed a simple copy and paste as the user mentioned