Having disk that came with my Sony laptop (with XP) damaged and useless I really need to make copies on bootable CD of all stuff on my computer. I was told that it is not complicated and will need 5-6 CDs and will end up with everything properly copied and one of the CDs will be bootable On my laptop can burn CD or DVD, have installed Roxio burner and also Magic ISO and ultraISO drivers. I haven't done it before, can't find any step-by-step info about how to proceed and will be greatly thankfull to anyone who can help me!
I'll second making use of Acronis True Image to make a backup. The image you create will not itself be bootable, but Aconis lets you make a bootable CD that can then reload all your data from the DVDs you burn. My advice to you is that although Acronis is good, errors can happen. For this reason I recommend you "validate" the image that you make, and also "mount it" when you are using your machine. Once mounted, just explore a few folders to ensure all is working as planned. If you are able to do this then you can be sure that the image you made is a good one. And if you like to make complete backups from time to time, you will seriously appreciate the use of an external harddrive that you can connect up to the machine. Using a pack of disks each time is v slow (but good for an initial backup you can always find).
I have used acronis as well, it's good but don't format or delete your data until you know your image is valid and useable. this is what I would do to make sure: once you have made your image, boot with the acronis CD, then attempt to restore the image, this will let you know if the image is ok. if it's not OK, try making another image the best way to make an image for XP I found was to first boot from the bootable CD and make the image. when I tried that the image worked flawlesly, but when I tried creating the image from inside XP it didn't create a valid image. so I would advice to boot from the bootable CD to make the image. hope this helps! EDIT: btw something else good about acronis, once you have created your image you can extract any files from it without having to restore the whole image, usefull if you are just looking for a few missing files that you have deleted or want to restore some files on a different computer.