Where is My Stuff Stored in Windows XP?
Besides the obvious MyDocuments folder (where photos, videos, text files and other documents are kept) there are some other places your stuff is stored.
Email is stored in other locations.
If you are using Outlook Express the exact location is a bit difficult to find. A typical location is something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{ 01F196D2-8158-419E-AF56-EB888C7B59DB}\Microsoft\Outlook Express with that long bunch of letters and numbers being different.
You can however change the location to a folder in MyDocuments and that will make it much easier to find for backup purposes.
For Outlook as in Microsoft Office Outlook, the location is as follows:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
Other email programs also may hide the location of where the mail is stored. Thunderbird mail is in a 'profile'. To backup your profile, close Thunderbird and copy the profile to external media.
Most folks don't want to lose their Favorites/Bookmarks. Pretty much all of the newer browsers have an option to save your bookmarks to a file. Then when the time comes you can just import them back in to the browser.
There are other places where stuff can be stored besides the MyDocuments folder. It depends on the program where the data files are stored, so do some searching. Don't forget that most of the files may be 'hidden', so you need to 'unhide' to find them.