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stuff works dot com. We're smart happens h I am Marshall Brain with today's question, how do you back up the hard disk drive on your home or office computer? Last week, we had a tragedy in the Brain household. Our main hard disc died. We have six people in the Brain family and a total of seven computers hooked up to the network. The hard disc on the main
computer died. This is a tragedy because the main computer is the one that houses all our family files, most importantly the forty seven thousand plus photos and videos of the Brain kids growing up, but also financial records, business records, book manuscripts, and so on. The main computer then shares those files with all the other computers in the house so that everyone can access them whenever they want to. Fortunately, this turned out to be only a time tragedy rather
than a family memory tragedy. It took a lot of time to replace that hard disk. It was not a memory tragedy, however, because there was a backup from the night before and we lost none of our files. If there had not been a backup copy, there would be nothing left of those forty seven thousand plus photos and all the other files that were on that hard disk, which brings up a good question. Have you backed up your computer lately, and if not, what's the best way
to do it. Let's take a look at some of the possibilities. There are three ways for you to back up your hard disk. First, you can manually back it up to an external hard drive. Second, you can get an external hard drive that will automatically back it up, or third you can back get up on the internet. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three of these, so we can look at them and see what those advantages and disadvantages are. In the case of the Brain family,
we use option too. I bought an external hard drive and it came with software that backs up the main computer's hard disk automatically. If you want to go to this route, go to the store and look at the different external hard drive options. You can find external hard drives just about anywhere at best Buy or New Egg or Amazon. If an external hard drive comes with software for backups, the box will talk about it. The question you will have to answer is how big of an
external hard drive do you need? This depends on how many files you have on your hard disk, which you can easily discover using the Windows Explorer. And then you right click on your documents folder and choose the properties option. It'll tell you how many files you have and how big they are. Let's say that you have a hundred gigabytes of files in your documents folder. Five hundred gigabyte external hard drive would be plenty big for that, and
these only cost about seventy dollars right now. So you get home, you plug the external drive into your computer, You spend a couple of minutes setting up the software, You start the backup process, and bang, your files get backed up. If you set a schedule, your files will get backed up every day. Some drives, for example, something called the My Book Essential, will even backup files the
instant you create or modify them. This is great. An external hard drive will handle the case of a hard drive crash on your computer, but it does not handle the case of something like a lightning strike. A lightning strike will destroy everything plugged into the wall, including your computer and the backup drive. To eliminate this vulnerability, you want an external backup drive that you unplugged and keep in a safe place by a second external hard drive,
and use it for this purpose. You can back up your files manually. Simply select your documents folder and drag it over to the external hard drive folder after you plug the drive into your machine. When your computer is done copying all the files, unplugged the drive and move it to a safe place in your house somewhere. Make sure it's not plugged into the wall. That works well, but what if your house burns down. Now you're gonna lose your computer and your backup and your extra backup.
You may want to keep a third external hard drive at a trusted friends or relatives house or in a safe deposit box at the bank. This is called an offsite backup. You might swap it out only once a week or once a month, but it's better than nothing. Or there may be a company in your area that specializes in offsite backups. All these external hard drives maybe
starting to sound like a pain in the neck. To be adequately protected with them, you need two or three and you have to rotate them periodically to maintain a current offsite backup. That's why Internet backup services have become so popular. You pay a monthly or an annual fee, and your backup is kept with a company on the Internet. Your computer backs itself up automatically through your Internet connection, and you never have to worry about lightning strikes or
house fires. A number of companies sell these services, including Carbonite, Norton, I Drive, Mosey, and many others. If you look on the internet, it's easy to find articles that review all these services and give you pricing. There are some extra advantages offered by these online services that can make them even more appealing, like the fact that you can then access your files anywhere in the world once they're backed
up to the Internet server. The only disadvantage of these Internet services is that most home Internet connections are fairly slow, especially on the up link side. There's no way, as far as I know, to use these services if you have more than twenty or thirty gigabytes of data, and if you have thirty gigabytes of data, it may take more than a month to back up all your files the first time if you're in the less than thirty gigabyte ballpark. However, internet backup services are a very easy
and safe way to protect your data. Whatever you do do something, especially if you're working on a laptop that you cart around with you on a regular basis, the probability of dropping it or losing it is pretty high. Without a backup, you could lose it all. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has staff works dot com, Jack threads is the online shopping destination for dudes. Everything on the side is up to off, all styles are curated, so buyer's remorse just doesn't happen.
What's more is, if you were brain stuff, you can skip the membership wait list and get instant access at jack threads dot com slash stuff