Once you have everything working as you like, buy an external USB hard drive (larger than your boot drive) and make a full system copy so you may restore in case of problems
Terabyte’s Image program makes a full drive image for backup – it will span multiple CD/DVD discs or write to a USB hard drive – as far as I know (I have multiple identical 80Gig boot drives which I rotate via removable drive housings, creating a backup and restore before I install or remove any programs) this program goes directly to the drive hardware to backup and restore EVERYTHING on a drive, even the "hidden" parts that software vendors use to store registration information
Note – my sister-in-law got hit by a destructive virus in early November (she was one of those people who got infected between the time the virus hit the internet and her anti-virus company updated their program files) and I was, since I had just made a full backup for her in late October, able to put her computer back in order with only the loss of a couple weeks worth of emails and a Word document or two… and then the first order of business after the full restore was to immediately run Windows Update and go to her anti-virus vendor’s web site for an upate so she would stay safe
Anyway, since she does not understand making data backups herself, Image was the ONLY thing that saved the day and kept her from losing ALL of her data files
Dos version is small enough to run off a 3.5 inch boot disk <
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-dos.htm>
Linux version creates a bootable CD, you MUST use this version if you have a USB mouse or keyboard (the DOS version won’t work if you have a USB mouse or keyboard) or if you don’t have a 3.5 inch boot disk
<
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm>
