This is a really silly question...
 

Does anyone know how I can back up about 40 gigs worth of music? This laptop has a DVD burner, I think, so that might work? Would you guys be able to recommend any programs that I could use and backup pretty much the whole contents of my documents (including settings, that'd be cool).

Are you asking how to burn a DVD? Try Nero Burning ROM, maybe?

Hm, I just now realized that the name is a pun.

If you want to back up all things on your PC, go for Symantec Ghost. I use Corporate version 8, but for you, pretty much any version will probably be alright.

For just the music, just burning with Nero will be fine.

Use WinRAR and make a split archive with each one ~4GB, then burn each part to DVD. Or use norton ghost to mirror the drive. (Into parts and put them on dvd maybe?)

1. Buy a Maxtor external drive.
2. Backup all the music onto it.
3. If you get more music, repeat steps 1 and 2.
4. After transferring the stuff, put the Maxtor away on a shelf and DON'T TOUCH IT!

That method has gotten me through two compy crashes with my music collection intact.

This is what I have going as well. Definitely the easiest solution to manage, and if you ever want to share your collection with someone you've got it on a very portable medium and can give whatever they want without having to fumble through DVD after DVD.

Check buy.com, they sell 400+GB externals for less than $100 pretty frequently nowadays.