Q. Why do I need Rapid Backup?

A. Can you imagine losing everything on your computer forever? Rapid Backup provides a quick and easy way to backup everything important to you that has been stored on your computer including: your downloaded music (protect your investment in iTunes music for your iPod, or other downloaded music from other sources), digital photos (pictures you've taken and transferred to your PC, or photos that have been emailed to you by friends and family), and important data (tax and financial records, documents and files, emails, or your entire system registry).

Q. I installed Rapid Backup, now what?

A. The installation should have created two desktop shortcut icons: Rapid Backup Advanced, and Rapid Backup Wizard. Before you begin, we recommend you create a new folder for saved backups, either on your desktop or in your My Documents folder (example folder name: My Backups). When this is done, open the Rapid Backup Wizard to get started.

You will need to create a backup set (determine what you want to backup) before you can do anything else. Rapid Backup comes with 3 predefined backup sets (My Documents, My Emails, Registry and Windows settings) and, of course, you can select specific folders or files to backup. In the FILTER DATA window, we recommend you skip to the next step, unless you know you only want to backup files with a certain extension (for example: .doc, .jpeg, .xls). After this, you will need to tell Rapid Backup where to save the backup set it creates; if you followed our above recommendations, then just pick the My Backups folder on your desktop or in your My Documents folder. Finish the rest of the steps, and your backup set will be complete.

Q. How do I backup my music (iTunes, MP3s, etc.) and photos?

A. Follow these steps to easily backup your music and picture files:

1) Open the Rapid Backup Wizard and choose New Backup set.

2) In the What do you want to back up? window, choose Drive, folders or files and then click the “Next” button.

3) The Select drive or folder window will now open. The standard location of your My Music and My Pictures folders is in My Documents. Click the + sign next to My Documents to expand its subfolders and then check the My Music and My Pictures boxes. Now click the “Next” button.

4) Unless you are familiar with file extensions, just click the “Next” button in the Filter data window.

5) In the Backup destination window, choose a directory folder to save your music and picture files to. If you followed our above example, choose the My Backups folder on your desktop or in your My Documents folder. If you have not done this step, then we recommend you click the Create new folder button. When the folder window opens choose Desktop in the top Parent folder dropdown box and then type in “My Backups” in the New Folder Name box. Now click OK, and the “Next” button to move to the next step.

6) Type in a name for your backup (i.e. Music and Pictures) and a description if you want (i.e. date, picture or music categories). Click the “Next” button.

7) In the Finish window, check the Save data now box and choose Normal (full) as the Backup type. Now click the “Finish” button.

Your backup has now been compressed and saved in the My Backups folder on your desktop (if you chose to follow our example above). You can use any CD/DVD burning software to burn this backup file to disc (most computers include this software), or you can use the Advanced features of Rapid Backup to burn your backup to CD or DVD. To do this, see the FAQ question below titled "I've created my backup set, but how do I backup to a disc (CD, DVD)?".

Q. I've created my backup set, but how do I backup to a disc (CD, DVD)?

A. Follow the steps below to backup to a disc:

1) Click the Advanced button in the Rapid Backup Wizard. When the new window opens, go to File>File Burner.

2) Choose Yes if an information window opens asking "No archive file found in the burning stage area, do you wish to continue?".

3) When File burner window opens, click Add files and browse through the “Look in” dropdown box to find your backup set (in our example, this would be located in Desktop>My Backups>Music and Pictures…). This will be a zipped file with a .zip ending to your file name. Choose the backup set and click the “Open” button.

4) When the backup file appears in the File burner window you can now choose the “Burn” button at the top of the window (make sure you have a blank CD or DVD in your computer’s writable disc drive, or a rewritable disc that has enough space on it to handle the size of your backup set).

5) The burner will now process and finalize your backup disc. When this is done, the disc should eject and a message will briefly appear in the lower section of the File burner window stating the process is done. You can now close out of Rapid Backup. REMOVE THE DISC and store it in a safe place!