Backing up hard drives to external, important data ie; pictures music

[xboxhaxorz]

I have always backed my personal hard drives using images for easy restoration

However i now have 2 PCs that need backup performed and they just want the data so an image is not necessary thus i only want the important data ie; documents and settings important files no junk such as updates or temp files

I would prefer to remove the hard drives and plug it into another pc to perform the backup instead of doing the back up from the actual machine

I was looking for the best possible way to perform this

 

[pjhutch]

You can use Windows Backup via Control Panel, System and Security, Backup and REstore, just for backing up your data and settings. A simple backup of C:\Users\<your username> would suffice for most people unless you have your documents on a separate folder or drive.
I use a good third party backup program called Retrospec Pro from EMC (Retrospect).