How to Backup Your Computer Hard Drive

In life, you always need to have a backup plan, in case your initial idea wouldn't work out exactly as expected. The same principle applies when you work on your computer. Because a huge number of people today depend highly on their computers to get their work and business up and running, you can only imagine how vital maintaining files can be. Back then, humans depended on floppy disks and hard copy print outs to store their documents, but today, there are easier options of keeping files for you. Note this: It is very important to keep reminding yourself to backup your computer hard drive.

First of all, why is there a need to backup your computer hard drive? Computer experts cannot stress enough how valuable it is to regularly do this. If you have tons of very important files on your PC, such as documents, photos, web pages, spread sheets, presentations, and others, you wouldn't want to lose them, right? Creating a back up of the contents of your hard drive will save you the woes of finding for ways to recover them, especially after a disaster like a computer crash or a nasty virus.

So how do you go about it? If you are running on Microsoft Windows as your operating system, it has a built in wizard that automatically does the backup for your. This backup can be restored by you at a later time, or whenever you need to retrieve your files. You can invoke this option from Microsoft Windows by going to the Accessories menu from your Program Files. Select System Tools and click on Backup. Follow the instructions on the wizard and you're ready to go.

However, that is only one option, and not too many people look to it as their main choice for backup. The best thing you can do is to purchase an external hard drive for your computer. Typically, you can get an extra 300 GB or more to save your stuff when you use an external hard drive, which conveniently connects to your PC via USB. In some stores, you can purchase external hard drives that can hold as much as 1 terabyte, or 1,000 GB.

When you backup your files, ensure that they are sorted out into appropriately labeled folders, so it can be easy for you to find them later on. Some people zip their folders first before doing so, while protecting with a password is a must for specific files. Creating a backup is just a matter of making a copy of all your files, and saving them onto your external hard drive. It's simple, but a very necessary chore.