Is there a way to back up without an external hard drive?

I will be upgrading to windows 7 from xp soon and i would like to know if there is such a way of backing up my computer without an external hard drive or cd.

 

That depends what exactly what you wanna backup and in what scenario. If you wanna back up in case of an HDD failure, then it's obvious that a backup without a storage external to your HDD would fail its purpose.

 

You could use partitions to back up another but as mentioned, if the HDD goes south, so goes the data.

 

got to have some kind of available media to make backups to.

otherwise, all you are doing is to make never-ending copies on the same media your original data lives on.

may as well not go through the trouble for all the good that will do you.

 

if its just to save the things you need before switching OSs, shrink your OS partition, make a second partition for the data, copy it over, install to the first partition. after getting all of your data back, delete the second partition and expand the first.

 

You could back up to a USB flash drive or over a network as well, but the best option is probably an external hard drive. Seeing as they're so affordable now, I would suggest that route.

EIement's method would work as well and is a good option if you have nothing to backup your data onto, but you run the risk of something being botched during all the partition shuffling.

 

in this case "run the risk" might well equal "eventual guaranteed 100% data loss"

 

I wouldn't leave anything on another partition if I reinstall the OS unless I've got a backup - besides, since I'm on a SSD I don't use partitions any more...

On one occasion it seemed as if my restoring C wiped clean D??? At least it was empty afterwards...

The fact that a secondary partition shouldn't be wiped doesn't mean it wont.

For security I would suggest an external backup if possible - also when you use the laptop.

An option nobody mentioned would be online.

My recommendation to you would be the Windows Live SkyDrive - however its limited to 50MB file sizes - and 24 or so GB in total.
Or look here
http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/28126-free-online-storage/

Alternatively, much easier - buy some CDs, they are cheap nowadays - Aldi has some good ones (never had a problem with them) - and make sure you have your burning software check for errors.