Backing Up With An External Hard Drive

Categories: Advice/Tips

Most likely, you’re thinking of buying an external hard drive so you can back up your precious computer data. You may have learned your lesson the hard way or you’re wiser than the rest of us and paying attention to all the horror stories you’ve heard. Whatever your situation, backing up your computer files is VERY important, so naturally your backup method is EQUALLY important!

First off, let’s think through your backup needs. Some questions to ask yourself might be:

How important are my files?
Do I have some files that are more important than others?
How many times do I need to back up my files?
How might I lose my files?
How much drive space do I need?
How often do I need to backup?
How much money do I want to spend?

You’ll need to figure out your own specific backup needs, but here are a few pointers:

Get loads of storage space! The simpler you can keep your backup method, the simpler your life will be. The best way to do this is to make sure you have more than enough space. You’ll be less likely to thoroughly backup your files if you have to sort through them because you don’t have enough space for them all.
Make sure your files are backed up at least once. If the file is incredibly important, back it up twice with a second drive. If you’ve got some extra cash, go an extra step and back your files up remotely with a web service.
Think about how you could lose your files – drive failure, theft, fire, etc.
Play around with whatever program you pick. Let it run for a day or two and double check everything. Make sure you’ve got the program figured out before you set it free to manage your priceless files.
After you get it all setup, create a system for monitoring your backup. You need an easy way to confirm whether your backups are actually happening, if the right files are being transferred, if a drive failed, etc.

There are many good backup programs out there. Don’t give up until you find the one that meets your needs. Most programs have a trial period so download a few and give them a spin. There are several free programs such as SyncBackSE. Try it out to get a feel for how backup programs work. We also recommend SecondCopy which is free for a trial period and then only about $20-30 to purchase.

No matter what you do, don’t assume you’ll never be so unlucky to lose your files. If you do have a hard drive crash on you, you might be looking at several hundred to over a thousand dollars to recover a bad drive and that’s IF it can be recovered. Whatever you chose to spend will be well worth it when you are spared the headache, heartache, and expense of lost data.