If you were to ask computer technicians which part of your PC has the highest value, most would give the same response. The answer is your data, because it’s often impossible to replace. This means you need to take strong measures to protect it. Your data is the whole reason you have a computer, after all. Without it, your PC would be like a car with nowhere to go, or a TV with no channels.
Everyone should backup their important files. There’s just no excuse. It’s not a difficult task, even if you consider yourself lacking in tech skills. Anyone can buy an external hard drive and put copies of their files there. This counts only if your external drive isn’t connected to your computer all the time. Carrying your files on a USB flash drive isn’t a backup, either. By definition, a backup is a security copy of your data stored somewhere other than your PC or flash drive.
As I mentioned, one of the most affordable ways to backup files is to buy an external hard drive. Even one that costs $40 will do just fine. That price would get you around 500GB today. I recommend you buy a drive that connects over USB 3.0. It should be indicated on the packaging. USB 3.0 supports faster speeds than the old USB 2.0 specification. Most drives these days use USB 3.0, so they shouldn’t be hard to find. For even faster speed, you can opt for an external solid-state drive. Instead of spinning disks, they use flash chips just like USB drives. They are fast enough that you likely won’t want to go back to a traditional hard drive.
If you’ve never backed up your files, simply copy everything you have onto the portable drive. To avoid a headache later, you should organize your files. In the root directory, create separate folders for Documents, Music, Images, and Videos. Copy your files into the appropriate folder. Tip: To select multiple files inside a folder quickly, press Ctrl+A on your keyboard. With the files selected, press Ctrl+C to copy the files. Go to the folder where you want to put them, and press Ctrl+V. You can also select the files and drag them to the folder you want to copy them to.
That’s it! Now store your portable hard drive somewhere secure. Find a place where the drive won’t get wet or be subject to temperature extremes. If you have a safe, this is a great place to leave your portable drive. You aren't going to be using the drive often, so it's not necessary to have easy access to it.
For added security, you can put another copy of your files in the Cloud. I’ve already covered it in a previous article. Choose your desired cloud backup service and store your files there. To avoid confusion, I recommend you make the same folders there (Documents, Music, etc.) that you made in the portable hard drive. That way you won’t question whether you have a file or folder in your drive that you don’t have in the Cloud, or vice-versa.
From now on, it's best to backup your files at least twice a month. That is enough to ensure you have the latest version of your files. It’s not too frequent, either. If your files are more mission-critical, you’ll want to do backups more often. That way you won't have to restore a two-week-old file to replace one you were working on.
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