"Bill" wrote in message
...
Many thanks for the helpful advice in the replies. One small point about
Ken Blakes comments on the D drive. Acer have said "Doing a restore back
to factory default will erase everything completely i.e. even
viruses/trojans on your C:\ drive. Restore back to its original state.
The D:\ drive will be left untouched as it contains your Recovery image
file which is hidden away." which led me to suppose that data files should
be kept on D as otherwise it would be erased.

The recovery partition is set at a size that will hold all data necessary
for complete recovery without ever generating a 'low disk space' error. As
you have already been advised, backups (saves) should be on media which can
be physically removed from the computer configuration.

An external drive is good for the purpose, as are DVD's. Flash drives are
not so good as they can just 'pop' without any warning..

--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/