Backup advice needed

i need to backup my Inspiron laptop as well as my iPad 2. I've narrowed it down to buying the cord. Now I need referrals for backup software. I'd like to backup Windows to my iPad as well as to a flash drive. Then I want to backup my iPad to iTunes on my Windows laptop, then to flash drive.

Which software do you suggest -- free preferably -- to do all this? I've been using Windows since 3.0 but Apple is fairly new. I'd need something fairly simple to use.

Once done, I'll upgrade to a Windows 8. I'm waiting on ten as I've read too many horror stories. That's normal, I know, but I always wait a while

Thank you

I don't know what "buying the cord" means.

I know absolutely nothing about backing up an iPad.

I have no idea if you could back up an Inspiron to an iPad. I've never heard of such a thing. Anything is possible.

You ought to think in terms of backing up the Inspiron to a hard drive of some type. Not to an iPad. Not to a flash drive.

I'm assuming you are referring to backing up Windows itself, not just your personal data, pictures, videos, etc.

The standard tool to backup Windows to a hard drive is imaging software such as Macrium Reflect or Aomei Backupper. Both are free.

You can back up to DVDs, but it's foolish and asking for trouble.

If you just want to back up your personal data, rather than your Windows installation, that's another story entirely.

"Backup" is a poorly defined word that means different things to different people at different times. What do you mean when you use it?

The cord is to connect the iPad to the laptop. I want backups of everything on my hdd on each machine so if one dies, I had a backup. I have an external hdd but I'm not sure if it will hold both systems or how to hook up the iPad to it

If you want to "back up" your laptop to your external drive, you need to use an imaging application. Macrium Reflect Free Edition would be the most common recommendation.

Find out how much space is used by the C partition on the laptop. An "image" of that, made with Macrium, would take up about half that much space on the external drive.

I can't help you with iPads whatsoever---backing them up or backing something else up to them. I'd be extremely surprised if you can backup a laptop to an iPad at all.

You should forget about backing up your laptop to any device OTHER THAN another hard drive. External would be fine.

You need to dig into the Macrium tutorials on this site for detailed info on backing up the laptop to the external.

Thanks. The external drive is empty so would take a copy of my laptop hdd. I'll look into Macrium for that. That leaves just the iPad to backup.