to easily copy or back up all of your documents, pictures, music, videos, favorites and contacts, navigate to the following location: C:\Users and locate your username (Windows Vista / 7) or c:\Documents and Settings\ for windows XP.  You can get there by going to “My Computer” and then going into the C: drive.  If you are given a notice that the folder contains protected operating system files, you can safely ignore this warning (XP)  Once you have navigated to this location, find your username in the list of folders shown.  If you don’t know your username, you can find out simply by clicking the start menu.  This is illustrated in the following images.

Once you are here, you can copy all of your user data by simply copying your username folder to a USB disk or flash drive with sufficient space available.  You can check your space requirements by right clicking on the users folder and choosing properties.  The dialog shown will let you know how big your backup disk needs to be.

Do the same for your intended backup drive to see how much space is available.

In the example shown you will notice the free drive space will not be sufficient to hold the entire contents of the users data directory.  If this is the case you will need to be more selective by going into the user folder and choosing individual folders such as My Pictures or My documents to copy.  The same process applies to find out if these folders will fit.

Now our sizes work and we will be able to back up those irreplaceable family photos!