so how do you back up your computer ?
 

I'm ashamed to say I have never backed up a computer I owned. I had a recent scare so it's time to do so. Windows 10 based so what is the best way to back up ? I have a CD drive/writer and I guess there is Cloud based ? Talk to me like I'm a 10 year old :D

Are you interested in backing up so if the computer goes belly up you can easily restore your data or are there things you want to back up because they are not replaceable?

If the first just get an external hard drive and run regular back ups from the computers operating system

For the second you are talking about disaster recovery which means there is a copy of the data off site in case of fire, flood, theft, etc...

You can do that with an online solution, carbonite, etc....

Some people don't trust their data to "strangers" or services they fear could be hacked

The solution there is two drives that get updated and removed from the home on a rotating basis so there is always one relatively recent instance somewhere else

An example would be taking one to work or leaving at a relatives / friend / neighbors

What kind of backup do you want? OS, applications, and data? Just your user data?

If you want a full system image, external hard drive and clonezilla. If just your data, external hard drive and just copy your user directory.

Personally, I keep my user data on a RAID-1 array to protect against disk failure, OS and apps on another drive. Truly critical files I have copies of in multiple places, most of which also live on a RAID array.

CD's backup is cool but will take forever.
You don't need to backup the operating system just your 'data'.
By data I mean all your documents (text, spreadsheets, etc.) and media (pictures and video)
I just have a huge external USB drive (they are relatively cheap) I have a 1TB I bought a few years back, you can get bigger ones now but I backup about once a year and haven't used even half of it yet.

I pretty much just grab my whole 'documents' and 'pictures' folders and drag them to the external drive, done.

If you have a bunch of videos you may need more storage.

I am the same...never did back-up and never regretted it. I did buy a data transfer cable w/software a long ways back. It lets you transfer all your data, pics, and emails to a diff computer quickly. I have used it a couple times with new comp purchases...works great.

I was a good little computer man and diligently backed up to a portable hard drive and then when I had an issue and went to restore, it couldn't read anything on the drive-showed it had stuff on it, just not readable- threw it real hard against the floor many times, still didn't work, but I felt better!

Now I just don't care since there is really nothing of great value on it- I would lose a lot of pictures, but none have sentimental value.

A 10 year old is far more tech savvy than most of us. You want me to talk to you like you are a 60 years old.

CD's are great for one time saving info but horribly slow for backing up an entire machine.

An external hard drive is a self contained hard drive that stores everything you need but is connected to your machine via the USB cable.

You plug it in and transfer all your document files (music, pics, checkbook, etc) onto it and unplug it and put it in a safe place. As already stated, depending how vital the data is, you want to have at least one set of backups in a place offsite in case of fire, flood, etc.

The cheapest way to backup is to copy and past using Windows Explorer (included with Windows). You can buy backup software that makes everything easy. Click a few buttons and let the software do the work.

I personally don't trust "cloud" data backup. I don't know if they've been hacked. I don't know if they are about to go belly up. Besides, backup via internet is very slow.

Finally, if you have business critical data, you may want to have software that automatically backs up your info to a second hard drive or external source automatically (like every time you hit save or even every so many minutes).

Like everyone said, external hard drive backup. I recommend getting one at least twice the size of your hard drive. Drive space is crazy cheap.

Time machine.

I think he's got a Windows box.

I had a hard drive go out on my MacBook Pro. I had been backing it up regularly. New drive in, bios lets me boot and connect to wireless and download my OS. Asks me if I'm restoring my machine, prompts me to plug in external hard drive. Click 'yes'. 2 hours later, my machine is back. Zero hiccups. Like it never happened. Call me a fan.

I use continuous Time Machine to one external HDD, weekly clone to another external HDD, and continuous cloud backup to BackBlaze. I've got a Mac.

Synology Box at work and home. Automatically mirrors my data.

Costco sells 5TB external HD for 129, sometimes 109 with coupon. You can set it up to automatically backup when it is connected.

They usually recommend 3 backups. One an hourly incremental (changes) backup like Time Machine on an external drive that you can restore individual or complete computer. Then one to an external drive you can boot from that changes are updated nightly. Then a full bootable backup to a deferent external drive done monthly.

I've had computers since 1988 and used to think a single raid array used as backup was sufficient. However TWICE with raid array backups the corruption from the failing internal drive was backed up to the raid making the backup useless. That is why instead of insuring my back drives are not going to fail by using a raid array, I use separate drives and make separate backups. That is also why I do nightly and monthly backups. If the nightly back backup copies the corruption can just restore it from the monthly.

One of my two bootable backup drives is Fireproof and Waterproof Iosafe drive.

I use and old mac as a file server with my 2 external backup drives with shared partitions for the time machine, backup, and fireproof backup for each computer in my home.

I also run a disk integrity app on the server that constantly evaluates the backup drives in the background that keeps them defragged and lets me know when they first start to have problems to insure I can replace them before i lose any data.

Sorry, don't know any windows apps for managing backups, I run Win10, but it is a virtual machine that gets backed up with the Mac it runs on.

You want the simplest answer?
1) Buy a 64GB USB flash drive.
2) Copy all your docs/files onto it.

This is not a Windows OS backup, but just your files.

I use Ghost and make an image backup, which basically means it copies the bits 'n bytes of the hard disk from top left to bottom right, to an external/USB hard disk. I also do a "files manager" type copy of my files folder to the external disk too so I can pull individual files back without doing a full restore.

Funny, I have this exact setup

Hi,
I use www.backblaze.com, of all the cloud based solutions this is the absolute winner, it is fully automatic for Mac and Windows.
I recommend it to friends and family cause I did my homework and I know this is the most reputable cloud based backup solution. My Parents and InLaws use it and they're happy cause there is no setup and no configuration.

So there, that's the easiest, use this recommend link and you'll get a month free: https://secure.backblaze.com/r/00s7b0

Good luck!

GF's new laptop makes a backup automatically from her SSD drive to a 1Tb hard drive. Clever wee thing. As long as the whole darn computer doesn't go west it should be good. I'll still do a plan B backup occasionally though.

I want to warn about a problem I once had with Time Machine. The HDD in my Mac failed, taking 10 years of family photos with it. No problem, I told my wife, I have backed up on an external disk using Time Machine . I installed a new HDD and clean OS, and started the overnight process of restoring about 2 TB from Time Machine. It didn't work. Tried three times. Each morning I'd find the process hung. From the logs I could see it was hanging at the same place each time. Finally I stayed up and watched the process, saw it hang, figured out which file it was hanging on, deleted that file from the backup, and tried again. Finally success. I was stressed out during those the days, knowing that my photos were now living on a single drive with no further backup. So now I use multiple backups and I don't rely on Time Machine alone.