I’m sure there are lists like this on the Internet already, but I wanted to create my own list and publish it.
Things you want probably to back up:
- Digital photos, remember to check all user profiles if you have multiple profiles on your computer
- Recorded videos
- Special hardware drivers, in case if your Windows/Linux can’t find them automatically
- Downloaded files, I keep all downloaded files in C:\Zipit so I would just back up that folder
- Possible music files from My Music folder, or somewhere else similar folder
- .torrent files. If you are µTorrent user, it saves .torrent files to Application Data folder if you haven’t specified the folder in µTorrent settings.
I personally like to copy the following to a safe place to save time when I’m reinstalling everything back.
- Different program settings. This is so you don’t have to waste time reconfiguring all programs again
- Scripts for mIRC. I’m an active user of this program so this saves me time of trying to recode all of my scripts again
- Browser bookmarks. I’m using Opera Link so it will automatically sync my bookmarks to fresh install of Opera browser