Just a quick question, the partition I'm running windows on is about 160 GB large out of the 250 GB total for my hard drive. How would I go about backing up my files onto the empty space on the hard drive?

Thanks in advance.

Sorry, I'm not planning on backing up all of my files. Most of the files (like video-games or applications) would be very easily replaced, since I don't have that many. These take up the bulk of my hard-drive space.

However, files like music files and my graphic designs would be very difficult or impossible to recreate. I didn't want to make a perfect backup, just back up certain files. I just want to know how to get these individual files onto the other space. I don't think this other space is partitioned.

If the space isn't partitioned, goto Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Manager, then Disk Management, you should be able to see the unparitioned space; right click, partition and format; it should then appear as the next available drive.
Should be a simple drag and drop job to back-up files from there.

You should really should keep a copy of you data on some form or removeable media (CD/DVD/USB HD), if the drive dies it'll take both partitions with it.

"Backing up" data from one partition of a hard drive to another partition on the same drive can protect you from accidental edits, overwrites, and deletes, but will do nothing for you if the drive croaks. Either get an external drive, or add a second hard drive to your case. Partition/format the new drive as Gent described, then use it for your backup.

Thanks for the advice guys, I'm probably going to take the tips about getting an external drive. I now realize that I probably made my partition way too small, the only reason I had the other one was to experiment with dual-booting or something like that, but I probably don't need 60 GB for that kinda thing. So is there a way to change the size of my first partition without reformatting?

Third party utilities are available to resize / split / combine partitions on a live system. One I've used successfully several times is Partition Magic.

IS ANYONE GOING TO MENTION THE SHEER STUPIDITY OF BACKING UP FILES ONTO THE SAME PHYSICAL HARD DRIVE THAT THEY ARE FIRST STORED ON?!?!?

that's like having some important phone numbers. you write them down on a pad of paper and then you think, hrm, what if i lose this pad of paper? i should make a BACKUP of my phone numbers. so you write them down again, on the SAME pad of paper, and think you're backing them up?!~?!?!?!!?

if your drive goes bad, BOTH PARTITIONS GO BAD, if your house catches fire, the hard drive dies, BOTH sets of data die.

burn them to cd, dvd, get ANOTHER hard drive, or an external drive.

Wow, calm down. If one partition has windows on it and the other is unformatted, I'm backing them up to the other drive in case my windows install corrupts. The reason I'm doing this in the first place is because I had a power failure as I was logging in, causing the system to forcibly shut off in the middle of registry writing.

Really, no need to troll.

if you have xp, that's what system restore is for.

You can get incredibly cheap external HD 'caddies' that will hold a standard IDE drive and enable you to connect via USB to your PC.

I got one for £7 for an old laptop drive I had and that now forms part of my backup solution.

I always say if its important ,back it up twice....its better to be safe than sorry.If you don't care if you loose them then go ahead the partition route,but if your drive craps out,so does the partition....gl