How to Back Up Your PC

It’s always a good idea to back up the information on your PC.  If not, you run the risk of losing valuable information, whether it’s in the form of personal pictures or important work documents.  Frequent backups can significantly reduce the stress of routine hard drive failure or a malware attack, but they’re often lengthy and a bit confusing.  It can be a hassle to do it regularly even though it’s essential for so many reasons.  Here are a few easy ways to back up your hard drive.

1. Back up to an external location.  The best way is to buy either a second hard drive or an external hard drive.  If you keep duplicate copies of every important document, even if one fails you’ll still have the other one to recover from.  You can do this manually, which is probably the most reliable way as then you can firmly ensure you have each and every file that is important to you.  It’s also quite simple.  Open up two windows, one for each hard drive, and simply copy over the files that you want to keep so you have two versions of each file.  Just remember to update them both whenever you make important changes.
2. Burn your important files to a DVD or CD.  Rewriteable DVDs are the best choice because you can fix any problems that arise in the initial copying.  You can also then reuse the DVDs if your old files become irrelevant, unnecessary, or are stored more securely somewhere else.  DVD storage is perhaps the least effective of any type of backup, as the DVDs require physical storage space and overall hold quite a small amount of data in comparison to hard drives, but they can be reassuring for the person who likes physical evidence of his/her files and cost effective for the individual who doesn’t have much that needs saving.
3. You can also use Window’s built in backup and restore feature.  Each version of Windows from XP on has this feature, though it has been improved regularly over the years, with Windows 7 currently boasting the best incarnation.  The feature is very easy to use and is accessible from the control panel.  You can choose whichever folders, libraries, or drives you’d like to back up.  Ordinary Windows 7 users can back up to another drive or a DVD, just like the first two choices I’ve provided.  Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate have the ability to back data up to another computer on the network, central server, or network attached storage; for most people, however, the first two will be just fine and will certainly solve the problem. Windows 7 also provides easy ways for you to recover those backed up documents in case of accidental deletion or individual file corruption.

If you’ve failed to backup your machine, it is sometimes possible to restore it to an earlier condition.  This can be done using the System Restore option in Windows.  It’s not particularly reliable for restoring documents, though, just for massive system changes, so it is always a good idea to back up everything you think is important or might be important in the future.