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!
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this Would be a great item to have….Will keep all my info safe JUST INCASE!!
I’ll enter but don’t know how good it’ll do cuss I NEVER I repeat NEVER win anything. I need my kids here doing this cuss they have way better luck then me,I enter my kids in contest when I can. My son won a Kick-scooter and a box of cookies last month and my daughter won 10 dollars.
I would love to win one. I do work on my computer and desperately need a back up so I don’t lose everything if something should fail! 🙂
Wow, my hubby wants one of these for Christmas. All of our pictures and videos are stored on our hd and I’m so worried about something to it! This would be a great prize to win! Thanks so much!
I need an external hard drive reallllly bad! I hope I win!!
We’ve been looking to get an external hard drive… would love to win one!!
I would really love this! I could put all our pictures on it and be able to send that and music to hubby 🙂
I figured out yesterday i have more than 10,000 photos and I don’t know how many videos. I really need to back up.
Thanks for the giveaway.
I would love this back up all our family photos
I could really use this, I have ALL of my daughter’s medical notes and medical history on my computer not to mention pictures of her medical procedures. Plus pics of my family.
I run a small business from Home. This is must have!!! Thanks for offering me the chance!!!
My husband and I both would appreciate this one =)
I would love this especially with the threat of losing all my digital photos and pictures!
I would love to receive on of these. I do lots of work on my computer and right now I save everything to CD or DVD and man it takes so many. This would be wonderful to have.
Would love this for storing all of my pictures.
I really hope to win this! I currently have NO back up for my computer and files, and no money to buy a hard drive!
I could really use this right now! All of our son’s photos are on our computer and I was just thinking I needed to back up everything ASAP. Was planning on buying an external hard drive but winning one would be super sweet!
What a great way to keep your data safe.
I always try tp backup the data in different places but most of them currupt after some time but the external hard ware is the best way to backup the important data and moves evvery where easilly.
Thanks!
I just went thru all of this what a major hassle it was! I would LOVE to win this one for X-Mas!
I definitely need one! Thanks!
I need one of these bad!!!! i have been looking at them for sometime
This would have been nice when My computer ate all my kids pics a year ago. would love to be able to back them up this time.
What a great idea for a giveaway! This external hard drive is so small and has amble amount of storage for all the pics I have stored up on my hard drive of the family. What a great article, there is nothing worse that losing all your family pics and important files!
An external hard drive is a great item! I lost all my pictures when my computer crashed:(
I could really use this to backup my photos.
I need one with all the photos I take and store on my computer. This is definitely needed!
This would be great to win. My current external hard drive is almost full.
i would love to get one for my brother who just got back from irak and is on his way to Korea, he has missed all of his 5 kids ceremonies,birthday’s,communion’s, etc. so i want to give it to him since this will be our last holidays with him, i have been recording all the ceremonies on video for him…thank you
My husband and I love taking pictures of ourselves and our toddler so I would hate to lose 5 years of love!!
this would be pretty cool to put all my pics on of my kids. 🙂
OMGosh! All my photos are on my hard drive so I knew I needed to get one of these but had no idea what I was looking for or how to use it lol thanks for this great info-can’t wait for the next installment!
This is one of those things I know I should do, yet have trouble with the extra expense and plain ol’ just getting around to it with a busy life. Two great reasons why I’d love to win this!!!!!!!
My husband would love this for his recording studio!! His back-up one just crashed on him.
My computer is giving me grief, I think it’s a warning if impending disaster…..better back up
Wow, there was a lot of info here I didn’t know, thanks for the information! I do leave my computer on like all the time, its a laptop. I restart it once and awhile. It’s actually having problems right now, maybe this is why! I could really use this portable hard drive, I was actually considering buying one before I send in my computer to be fixed, but they’re so expensive (compared to my budget anyway)!
As a photographer, I NEVER have enough back up space. Those huge files just eat my space. I can definitely use this for my own personal files, which always get pushed to the side when having to back up… because of space issues alone.
I so need to win this,lol! We just got a new computer and need an external hard drive. Our old computer crashed and we lost some photos, so this would be awesome!
this would be great i can’t really afford a backup drive right now and i need to get one with 4 kids it would be heartbreaking to lose everything. hopw i win it would be great. thanks for giving me a chance to win
It would be fantastic to win one of these. It gives you such piece of mind to have back up, especially on older PCs.
I would love to have one of these for my laptop. Have 3 WD my books that I use to back up my desktop and they are FANTASTIC!
This would be amazing to win! Would help GREAT with my photography!!!
I have been thinking about this for awhile. My computer keeps getting slower and slower I know it’s all the pictures taking up so much memory. Scared I will lose all the photos I have of my husband and son. Since my husband passed away in march I don’t want to lose those memories for my son to have to some kind of memory when he gets older. My son was only 18 months when he passed away.
this would be very usefull, great giveaway!
would love to win this!
I would LOVE to win this!!!
I have so much work and other things on my computer that could use a back up system!
Hope I win!!
This would be great!
This would be great!