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I know you’ve heard me say it over and over again. You KNOW you have to backup your computer. Hardware fails every single day, and if you don’t have a plan in place to backup your computer you are just asking to lose all of your pictures/videos/documents etc! I prefer backing up to an external hard drive. I currently use a Western Digital Passport. Online backups (to me) take too long, and I don’t like the idea that I have to be online to restore. What if my internet is down when I need to restore my files? What if something gets corrupted in the transfer? I just prefer to have my backups with me at all times. Here are some of my “best practices” for having a good backup at all times.
Do NOT leave your external hard drive plugged into your computer at all times, or plugged into power at all times. Typically an external hard drive has the same kinds of parts as your internal hard drive. It’s just in a nice plastic casing to protect it. Would you leave your PC turned on ALL the time, even when you are sleeping? There is a reason that PC’s have a sleep or hibernate setting. You want to rest your hard drive, and the rest of the pieces of your computer from time to time. You wouldn’t leave your car running at all times either, right? So it is with an external hard drive. If it is constantly plugged in, it is constantly spinning the disk inside. that takes power and causes wear and tear on the internal parts. An external hard drive running in this manner will fail sooner than later. Best practice is to plug in the hard drive during the backup. When the backup is complete then unplug and store it in a safe place.
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Offsite backups. Companies do this, and you may not have to be super crazy about it, since it’s just your personal data, but a good idea is to have your backup stored in a place that can’t be damaged when your home gets damaged. Two good places for this is to either store your backup at a friends house, or in your car. If you are getting out of the house during a fire, you may not remember to grab your hard drive. So to save you the hassle, backup to two different hard drives. Store one near your computer for easy file retrievals (say you accidentally deleted that file you’ve been working on for months, luckily your backup is there to save you), and store the other one in the car or at your friend’s house.
Come back tomorrow for the rest of the best practices for backing up your computer!
Western Digital was kind enough to give me an external hard driveto use with my review. It’s ultra portable, and can hold up to a TB of data (that’s 1,000 GB). My backup transferred to the hard drive lickity split and it’s a sleek black and blends in nicely with my desktop. I hardly know it’s there! They also offered to give two of my readers a 500 GB Passport! To enter to win the external hard drive simply leave a comment on this post. As always, only one entry per person. Giveaway will end on Sunday November 21st. Again there will be 2 winners!
Sarah Kimmel is a digital parenting coach and family tech expert. She has spent the last 16 years of her career as a Microsoft Certified IT Manager supporting over 100 small businesses. During that time she started Family Tech LLC to help families understand and manage the technology in their home. She has regularly appeared as a family tech expert on KSL News, BYUtv and Studio 5, and has been invited all over the world from tech companies like Lenovo, Verizon, Microsoft, Dell, and Samsung. Find out more on her website SarahKimmel.com