text: i have an external hard drive.  how do i back up my entire computer onto it?  including windows and drivers? i have a 160 gb external hard drive and i want to back up my entire computer onto it.  i have a dell laptop, and the external hard drive is surely big enough.  i want to back up absolutely everything that is on this computer onto my hard drive just in case anything ever does happen.   when i simply try to cut and paste everything, it says that it can't be done because of certain drivers being run.  i am sure that some programs that i don't see are at work all of the time and i do not know if them running is what is preventing me from doing what i want.  please help me. you can backup your entire drive to the external drive using true image backup software. it can backup almost everything absolutely everywhere. note that for best safety you need to have at least 2 images of your system, so i'd recommend you to backup it not only to the external drive but also on the cds/dvds.  latest version of ati: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ free version of ati: http://www.acronis.com/mag/vnu-ati7