Backing up Your Computer

Gorjan Kolev
Backupology
Published in
3 min readDec 31, 2021

One of the most common mistakes you may have made is the loss of content on your computer due to unforeseen circumstances and the inability to restore any of them because you did not make a backup.

If your hard drive cracks or you have a malware attack, you can be sure that everything will be fine if you take the necessary precautions to back up your computer. Not sure what to back up?

You can start with personal files such as your home videos, photos, music library, and important documents that would be difficult to recover. You need to back up individual files often.

Also, you are able to back up your operating system, programs, and other settings that you deem necessary. Frequent backups and prioritization of your computer will save you money and time in an emergency.

Cloud Backup Services encrypts files on your backend. It indicates that the provider does not have a key to decrypt them, making them as secure as possible. But if you still do not trust the cloud backup service, your 3–2–1 backup options are much more limited.

Still, you need to have one backup at home and another off-site. For off-site backup, you need another drive stored in another physical location, such as at work or a friend’s house.

With this in mind, you can set up a remote server system to handle this, but it’s incredibly complicated.

A local or on-site backup is physically stored on your site, such as an external hard drive backup that is faster, easier, and much more secure.

Windows users

Windows delivers a simple solution for backing up your data named Windows Backup. It is known as Restore to Windows 7 and File History to Windows 10. Foremost, make sure that your external hard drive has the identical capacity or more than the internal hard drive that you will back up — next, type “backup” in the search bar and select Backup Settings.

At the very top corner of the screen, you are able to note a backup using File History. Overall, you can use the plus button to tell your computer which disk to back up everything. You can then schedule a backup as often as you like.

Mac users

For Mac users, you can go to System Preferences, Time Machine and select your backup disk. You can then run on hourly updates and copy the desired changes to the hard drive.

It’s a simple process, but it only stores backups until your hard drive runs out of space. It will then overwrite the oldest data, which can be a problem if you need to access the data further in the timeline.

Final words

The final words are that backing up your computer is a straightforward process that will save you time and a lot of money just in case something happens to your computer.

Prioritizing and frequently taking the time to back up your memory and storage are excellent protection and prevention measures against losing or stealing your data.

Generally, it is a great habit to acquire, primarily if you work with sensitive personal or business information.

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Gorjan Kolev
Backupology

Content writer, geek and combine them together you will find out I write about IT stuff.