Rumor has it that Jim Isbell may have mentioned these words: My condolences... ;-) Most *real* backup programs (read: not M$) will still do that, but they usually cost a pretty penny themselves... I don't know if there are any winders freeware proggies that can do this that are any good. Norton Ghost. I make periodic backups of my system like this all the time. I ghost my entire drive to a ghost image, and burn it to a bootable DVD. If the machine goes TU, I replace the drive, boot from DVD, and restore the system to a known-good state. Drive to drive is even easier... (just make sure the main drive & backup drive aren't on the same chain, as it'll take quite a bit longer.) There may be other programs that can do this (I think the makers of Partition Magic have a program that works similarly) -- I cannot speak for those, I've only used Ghost. Why would you need to 'merge' them in? If you're doing a fresh install, set up your email and before checking your mail, restore the datafiles (bookmarks, etc.) in the directory that Nutscrape makes. You don't *really* need Nutscrape's default bookmarks, eh? If you're using ghost, every email you had before your HD cratered will still be there. (Of course, anything you had since your last backup will be *poofed*.) [[ If you ever do need to 'merge' you're email, just concatenate the files - Nutscrape uses standard mbox files to store the mail. Bookmarks & address book are a different critter. The bookmarks are HTML, so you'd prolly have to cut-n-paste between two instances of text editor. I have never used an address book, so I can't comment on that. ]] If it's important, I *never* save it under the desktop or 'default' locations on the HD. Since the Win3.1 [1] daze, I've always created a separate directory directly off the root dir, called !merch. (The bang makes it "float" to the top of any alphabetized directory listing) and put subdirs there (dox, spreadsheets, pix, etc...) That way, I have 1 "easy to find" directory to back up and I know everything I need to save is there. How to change the default save directory in whatever programs you use I'll leave as an exercise to the reader... ;-) HTH, Roger "Merch" Merchberger [1] Why Win3.1? Before that, I never kept anything important on my IBMish critter so I never worried about backups - everything was stored on floppy on my Tandy CoCo3. So I lost a few game save files. "big whoop." ;-) -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch(a)30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in!