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.
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!
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.
We lost all of our pictures on our last computer.
I have been using memory sticks for each calendar year of photos. I have always wondered whether this is better, worse or comparable (except for cost) to external memory. Anyone want weigh in on this? Thanks!
I have my entire family photo album on the computer. Which scares me, since every time my computer “sneezes”, I am afraid I never see those pictures again. A backup is in order! And an external drive could be extremely helpful. Thanks for the opportunity!!
I would love to give this to my wife as a Birthday gift!
Thanks for the tips. I would love to get an external hard drive. I have tones of family pictures that need to be backed up!
I need this too! Thanks for the great info and giveaway!
crystal4email at gmail . com
Sounds like something I could use!! 🙂
Wow, thank you so much – what a great giveaway!! I am definitely one of those people that knows we should have one, but doesn’t yet…hopefully I win and it’ll be all taken care of! 🙂 lol
Have a great day! 🙂
I would love to win this…I need it badly!
I would be soo upset if I lost all my beautiful pictures of my grand daughters and friends, this would help me a lot!!!!!!
There are SOOO many reasons I could use something like this! I am a high school teacher, so I have endless files on my school computer AND home computer for school work. On top of that, I have two precious boys, (3 and 1) that I have thousands of pictures of that I certainly don’t want to lose! Lastly, I’m working on my National Board Certification for school, and backing up my files is of utmost importance. This type of backup system would be invaluable for me!!!
Between pictures, recipes, and all the school work, this would be a handy thing to have to store it all on. Thanks for the opportunity.
You would be helping out 2 families if I won this. Thanks for the opportunity.
I have pictures on my computer dating back to 2003 and could REALLY use an external hard drive to save them all to!
My daughter and I share a computer and this would sure be great.
i have soo been needing an external hardrive since i got my canon camera!
I would love to have one of these. I have been procrastinating far too long! :o)
Thanks!
I would love to have an extra drive to back up my tons of family photos!
I was just telling the hubby last night that we need one of these. Would be awesome to win!
My computer has been acting up lately and all of my wedding pictures, pictures of my son’s first year and other precious family memories are all solely located on my hard drive. I would LOVE a backup to save all of these pictures!
I share a computer with my daughter and this would be so great.
Our computer crashed last week. Luckily I had most of our family pictures on Snapfish and also many on a flash drive, but lost all from the past 2 months! We need this! Thank you for the opportunity!
would LOVE to win this!
This is awesome!!! Thanks.
I would love to win
I think they are very important but pretty expensive for my budget i have 4 computers total some given to me some paid for but I know I need to back them all up and this will help hope i win good luck to e very one else as well
I could really use one of these before something bad happens 🙁
I would love to win this. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to my computer!
I’ve lost everything before and it is a terrible feeling. I’d love to win this so that is never happens again!
We totally need one of these! Actually, we had one my husband took on deployment but it broke or something–all information on it just up and disappeared. Although that info can’t be retrieved, we still need another one!
This would be an amazing thing to win. We currently have two computers in our house and will be adding a third soon. This would make transferring files from one to another much easier. I sure hope I win.
Always useful. I’d love one!
This would be great for saving all of our photos and family videos
backing up to an external hard drive is such a great idea- very practical!
I have all of my kids’ pictures on my computer. I had lost some of my daughter’s baby pictures on our old desktop, I never want to have that happen again!! Good luck to everyone!
Just after my middle son was born my father gave me an external hard drive so we wouldn’t loose anything from the kids. It was also the last time I saw my dad alive. Shortly thereafter we had a thief in our house, working on the remodeling so my mom could move in. They took over 20000 dollars worth of stuff including both our our backup drives. I am soooo thankful for my hard copies because those were the last pictures of my dad. Thank you do much for this opportunity as it is one of the most valuable things to do!
With hundreds of pictures of my kids on the computer, I suppose I better back them up! Thanks for a great article!
Perfect for my photography business !!!!
Wow, this looks great. I am always thinking how I need to do this and never do. So afraid of losing all my pictures of the kids
I could really use an external hard-drive for the thousands of pics I have taken.
Holy cow. What good timing! I’ve been meaning to get one of these, but still haven’t. I work at home doing medical transcription, so a loss would be catastrophic. I’ve been luck so far…but luck only lasts so long!
I’m one of those that’s playing with fire right now with no back-up plan…
On Thursday, November 11th I recieved the following message on my computer: “Your hard drive is FULL!!!” It was my son’s 1st Birthday and I am dying to see the pictures =/
Amen! Gotta just do it!
I really need to back up all my photos! Could use this for sure!
My laptop is making wierd noises, and I don’t have a back up for all my files, specially my baby’s pics. He is 16 month old!!! Good Info BTW!!!
I think photos are the biggie in backing up my computer. But then I start thinking about all the other files I have that I would hate to lose….
I have this exact hard drive on my Christmas list this year!
This would be a great gift!
I would love to win this…I take hundreds of pictures of my girls every month & I would love to know that they are safe!
Oh I hope I can win this! Hubby has been wanting a TB HD for the longest time.