The best ways to back up your data

By Les Shu on 16 August 2007

Introduction | The cheap plan | The partial plan | The remote plan | The pocket plan

Simple, inexpensive ways to automate your data backups are at your disposal. What are you waiting for?

It's like having your teeth cleaned or checking the air in your tires: Backing up your hard drive is something you should do regularly, but because of forgetfulness, the unpleasantness, or just plain laziness, you put it off. Before you know it, the drive takes a dive, and all your work files, emails, downloaded music, and digital family photos are gone for good.

Given consequences so dire, why don't we back up more often? Of more than 2,000 adults polled, a recent study by Seagate and Harris Interactive found that nearly 50 percent don't back up their drives. The reason? A full 35 percent of participants said they had no idea how.

And that's why companies such as Apple, Dell, HP, Seagate, and Western Digital are developing ways to make backing up your hard drive a one-touch process -- or, better yet, a no-touch process that happens in the background while you work on your other projects. Though you have a number of ways to safeguard your data, none are perfect. We recommend finding a method that best suits your needs and work style -- and that the procedure be no-brainer simple so you'll actually do it. Here are some of the best options.

Topics: backup, data, storage, drive, backing, file, disc, external, hard drive

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Comments (2)

  • joey commented on 05/08/2009 11:49 Report abuse

    ah i was thinking of geting a external harddrive but it was expensive then i realise i got 2 hardrives already. only if i had a usb case for 1. ive been having trouble finding one. just a case for my 500gb sata drive that can connect to any pc simply like a thumb drive but larger and a cable hanging off. i want this as my personal backup cause windows tends to hate me so i dont want it with my windows partition. and may as well have it external so i can take to here and there. conntact me on joanne.glasgow@education.nsw.gov.au

  • Sarick commented on 16/02/2009 12:20 Report abuse

    Fairly useful but mainly a resource rather then an actual tutorial on what to choose.

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