External hard drive backups?

[Elfin]

I'm new to using an external hard drive for creating backups. The external drive is quite a lot larger than the notebook drive I'm backing up, so I wonder if it's wise to back up the entire thing, including OS? (all folders and subfolders of "My Computer" would take care of this, I'm guessing?)

Right now I'm just backing up all my documents, photos, music, etc, but since I've got tons of space on this external drive, would it be wise to go ahead and capture absolutely everything possible for an easier restore of the entire system, should it be necessary? Or is that just silly, and overkill? I do have the system restore discs, after all)

Thanks for any advice !

 

[DoubleHelix]

A direct file-to-file copy won't result in anything you can restore completely. For that you'd need some type of image creation software.

 

[Elfin]

Thanks for that info! I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing, then...