Best Ways to Back Up Your Files

It's important to back up your files regularly to guard against data loss. Despite this, many computer owners fail to back up their data. Often, this is because backing up computer files is inconvenient, difficult and time consuming. Tradition has it that the best way to back up your data is to use writable or rewritable CDs or DVDs. In fact, this is one of the worst ways to back up data. CDs hold up to 870 MB of data, and DVDs can back up between 2.6 GB and 9.4 GB of data. Even using the highest capacity DVDs, you'll end up shuffling a large quantity of discs to back up your data. You'll have even more trouble trying to find your data on the discs later on. Fortunately, there are better ways to back up your computer files.

High Capacity USB Flash Drives

A high capacity USB 2.0 flash drive makes an ideal backup device for computer files, both for temporary and permanent storage. They are more convenient that CD-RW or DVD-RW discs for transferring data to another backup device. Solid state flash drives are more stable than hard drives and unlike discs, are not prone to scratching. They can be written to and erased thousands of times. Affordable USB flash drives are available in a wide range of capacities typically ranging between 1 GB and 128 GB. USB flash drives don't require any special software to back up data on your computer. You can easily use Windows' "Copy to Folder" command in the "Computer" or "My Computer" folder to back up your files while you're working in other programs.

Online Backup

There are several websites where you can remotely back up your data online for free. While online data storage isn't the most secure backup solution, it is very convenient. It allows you to access your files from any computer. Remote online backups will not be lost if your computers are stolen destroyed in a flood or fire. Online backup services also provide free software to make your backups faster and easier. On ADrive.com, you can get up to 50 GB free online storage space for your backups. On the Windows Live Skydrive site, you can get 25 GB of online backup space for free. To access the online storage, you must sign up for a free account. Make sure to keep an account of the usernames and passwords of all the online backup sites you sign up for.

External Hard Drives

External hard drives are available in capacities up to 2 TB from companies like Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor. A high capacity external hard drive is one of the most convenient devices for backing up your files. Typically, external hard drives can attach to your computer by USB 2.0, FireWire and eSata. They can be easily detached from one computer, then attached to any other computer with the right ports. There are even network external hard drives that can accessed from all computers on a network at once. External hard drives often come with their own free backup software. You can also use backup software included with Windows to back up your files to an external hard drive.

Backup to Another Computer

If you have more than one computer, you have an excellent way to quickly and easily back up your files. You can use your wireless or wired home network, a USB flash drive, an external hard drive or backup discs to transfer copies of files from one computer to another. When using this backup method, it's best to create multiple, redundant backups of your files in case one computer is stolen or destroyed or suffers operating system or hard drive failure.

For more information, read Best External Hard Drives for PC and Mac.

Sources:

"Understanding Recordable and Rewritable DVD," OSTA.org
"Understanding CD-R and CD-RW," OSTA.org
"Why should I use USB Flash Disk (Drive)?" ChangBioScience.com