This week, we’re going to backup all your pictures, documents and music to a USB Flash Drive that you hopefully bought at Office Max.

On your Apple laptop or desktop computer, plug in the USB Flash Drive in a USB slot, and hopefully an icon will pop up on the desktop screen looking like a hard drive with a name of “Untitled.”

First we need to make this Flash Drive work with an Apple computer that will be able to be read and write the files and display on a Windows computer. It’s nice to be able to interchange data between the two operating systems.

Ready to begin? On the very top of your desktop, open up the menu GO, UTILITIES, DISK UTILITY, APP. A new menu pops up. On the left-hand side, it shows INTERNAL, and underneath it shows the name EXTERNAL. The name of the Flash Drive – like, for instance, “Lexar USB Flash Drive” or some other brand – should show up under EXTERNAL.

Click on the Lexar, for instance, and a menu pops up at the top where you want to click on ERASE. You’re doing great so far, and the hard part is just about over.

A new box shows up allowing you to name your new Flash Drive, so give it a name. Now, in the Format box, click on the up and down arrows and choose MS-DOS (FAT). Then click on Erase. It only takes a few seconds and you’re done. Close all the boxes and return to the desktop displaying the new name of your Flash Drive.

That was the hard part. Now the fun part begins, so we can backup all your music.

Just like the PC users, we can have two separate windows side by side that we can drag and drop, or copy and paste, files between the two windows. One of the windows, of course, has to be your Apple’s hard drive with all its files listed on it, and the other window should be the Lexar (or the newly named Flash Drive you created).

What we are going to do is copy everything in the Music folder of your Apple computer over to the Lexar Flash Drive window, so let’s get started putting two windows on your screen.

Start off by clicking on the Finder icon on the bottom dock. That’s your first window now appearing. Hey, you’re doing great. Now DOUBLE-click on the Lexar hard drive icon (or your new name of the hard drive icon) on your desktop. It now shows up, too. Great!! You now have two windows up and showing, and you can drag or copy files and folders between them.

Let’s put them side by side. Holding your mouse down at the very top of the Apple’s window, drag it left or right of the Lexar window until it looks close to side by side. Okay, now click on the Music folder on the Apple side. It opens up showing all the files and folders; we will copy everything on it and paste it on the Lexar window side.

Now, just click on the blue iTunes folder, then click on the very top of the screen to EDIT, SELECT ALL. Everything should turn blue. Again, click on the very top to EDIT and click on “Copy ITUNES.”

Now go over to the Lexar window and click on it anywhere. At the very top of the screen, click on EDIT, PASTE “ITUNES.” Wow!! You did it! iTunes now appears on the Lexar side window.

Wasn’t that easy? You just made your first backup of all your music. If you want, you can keep both windows open and copy and paste – or drag and drop – all your photos and documents over to the Lexar window.

When you’re finished, just close all windows, shut down your computer, pull out the Flash Drive and store it away.

Send your computer-related questions to mauimist8669@yahoo.com.