Backup Strategies for Your Home Computer

When the world of computing was still new to me I kept just about everything I worked on in the default "My Documents" folder and slept pretty well at night. That was up until the time my hard drive crashed and I could not afford to pay a recovery specialist to pull the archived information for me. I lost my current resume, some financial information, a list contacts, and several other things that were either impossible or extremely laborious to recreate.

Media
It was in that moment that I began to appreciate the importance of backing up computer data. Unfortunately, this was before the time of portable memory and thumb drives so I burned a lot of CDs trying to create a regular backup. Things are much simpler now. The improved technology and capacity of these mobile storage devices such as the aforementioned memory sticks make it easy to transfer up to 2GB of data. Data DVDs can hold over twice that amount on a single disc.

Strategy
The hard part is determining a backup frequency and then having the discipline to actually create the backups. Without investing in elaborate backup management software and expensive tape drives, the best way to backup your hard drive is to simply sit down at the end of each month (or more frequently if you frequently update documents) and move the contents of the folders you would like to backup on to one of these external devices. I have created a "data" folder on my local drive that contains all the files I want included in my monthly backup. I simply copy the folder and its contents from my local drive to the external device once a month.

Using an External Hard Drive
Another option is to purchase an external hard drive and synchronize the data from your PC's hard drive at a desired frequency. The cost of these external drives has dropped significantly in the last few years, as has shrink-wrapped software for the home user that automates the synchronization of the two drives. External drives typically connect via USB and will appear on your PC as a separate drive letter - typically as a "Removable Disk."

The benefits of using any of the suggested backup media and a disciplined backup strategy are obvious. If at any point your primary PC has a hard drive error your data is preserved as of the last backup job completed. If you accidentally delete an important file, you may retrieve it from your backup and restore it to your primary drive. Deciding what type of backup media to use and developing the frequency of backup jobs is the hard part.