My laptop is starting to struggle so want to do a clean format and re-install.

I used to backup via a portable USB hard drive, but that died a few months back. I could buy a 3.5" caddy to use my spare hard drive, but just wondered if there are any other options?

My main problem is that the laptop is Vista, and the PC is WinXP. Despite lots of Googling, they refuse to co-operate and won't allow file sharing over my wireless network. Will I have the same problem if I create a null ethernet cable?

you'll probably find, if you pop your external hdd open, it's just a standard IDE drive in a caddy (might be 2.5" though). So just bung a new drive in there?

backing up over ethernet is oft a little flakey

Are the laptop/PC in the same workgroup? Vista is WORKGROUP and XP was MSHOME or something.

Buy a NAS drive?

I changed the workgroup, got some visibility but could access stuff properly. Whats a NAS drive?

I bought a replacement caddy for the 2.5" drive on the off-chance it was the interface board that was dud. You've given me an idea though…could I use the caddy to mount my laptops drive, and then copy the data to my PC? Is there any type of protection or problems that could arise?

Do you have a desktop PC? If you get hold of a 3.5 to 2.5 IDE adapter cable (£3-5?) you could pop the drive out of the laptop, mount it up in the desktop to transfer your data, then pop it back in to reformat. Back in the day, Laplink was the way to go, and you can get a USB to USB transfer cable from ebay etc to do the same job without having to get into a fight with Windows networking.

NAS drive – http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152027

could I use the caddy to mount my laptops drive, and then copy the data to my PC?

Yep you can do that, I've had to do it with an old laptop the board died in, just plug it in to your PC and find the folders you want to copy over.

Thanks, will copy the drive using the caddy then 🙂 That'll be this evenings little project.

That NAS drive sounds like what I need long term though…I was using the portable drive to store all my pics, Picassa was set to use it as its library so I could easily access the pics on both PC and laptop.