linux - backing up data

Hi,
When I was using xp pro, it was easy to backup installers for applications,games,portable software to an external hard drive; this does not seem to be the case with ubuntu -- is there an easy method to backup all downloaded software,games, etc to an external hard drive in case of your pc crashes/is stolen/lost?

Also just one more thing - if I was to backup everything from linux onto an external hard drive -- I presume that external hard drive would need to be formatted in ext instead of ntfs?

Any adive would be great.

Thank you.

Bye.

 

tar and gzip it.

Code:

tar cvzf tarfile.tar.gz [I]files[/I]