Back Up My Computer

kayby

I keep being told I have to 'backup' my computer. I have a windows 7 Laptop and don't know where to start and not sure what it means. Do I need to buy a USB stick to do this and is it complicated as I'm not at all techhi.

closed

1. buy a portable usb hard disk, and a tub of blank dvd's, should total less than £50

2. Install macrium reflect free, use it to create a disk image backup (not clone) on the portable drive

3. burn a copy of your most important data to dvd's

repeat steps 2 and 3 every so often

4. create a macrium bootcd, and a windows recovery cd for your machine

Then whatever happens, your data is in at least 3 places, and you have 3 means of recovery should windows/disk fail or get infected.

SeduLOUs

It depends on what you actually want to backup.

If your computer set on fire tomorrow and you could never access it again, what will you have lost that you will miss?

If the answer is nothing, then don't worry, you don't need to backup.

If you have loads of music/photos/documents that you couldn't live without then you need to start backing up.

Documents and Pictures

Use some sort of free cloud storage for your general documents. You have limited space but more than enough for loads of word documents, but probably not enough for a high number of photos and music.

If you use Google Drive, you can also store your photos for free (without it counting against your storage limit). Other alternatives are OneDrive or Dropbox.

Any of these methods can be installed to your PC and will show as a folder when you look in your documents. Anything saved in there will be safe if your PC dies as long as you connect your computer to the internet regularly.

Music

If you do have a lot of music stored that you don't want to lose, the best bet is to buy an external hard drive which connects to your PC with a USB cable. You can then copy all of your music to it the same way you would a USB stick, so that you have a copy of all your music in case your PC dies. If you don't buy music regularly then you only need to backup once a month or so.

Also bear in mind if you buy your music from iTunes or Amazon, then your purchase are stored and tied to your account anyway, so no need to back up as you would just be able to redownload everything to a new computer anyway.

kayby

Thank you for the response it makes a lot more sense to me now you have explained it.

SeduLOUs

No worries. If you have any more specific questions about anything just ask

Heedtheadvice

Both two good responses. I would only add buy a hard drive a lot bigger than the current one in your laptop so the subsequent backups can be kept separate (just in case for example you back up a problem and so will have an earlier copy available). Store the harddrive and DVDs separate to your laptop ( and do not leave the HD connected anyway!)./ Set yourself a reminder on a calendar to do the backups (if you need to!)

'Cloud' backups fulfil many of the security precautions mentioned above but bear in mind the longer time to backup your hard drive image unless you have a very fast internet connection and the possibility of using up any broadband allowance ( drive used space of say 100GB and a possible allowance of 10GB a month ??).

Also bear in mind not just how important your data may be but also the cost to replace anything lost (programs, data, op system) and the inconvenience caused.

grumpycrab

closed wrote: »

4. create a macrium bootcd,

2 quick questions. What's the easiest/best "macrium bootcd" to create (there appear to be 3 options)
Secondly, if a computer has multiple partitions and UEFI BIOS (IE like all modern computers) what is the minimum required to backup? Is it, simply, the C: drive (partition). Thanks.

closed

free version of macrium only comes with a linux version, or a pe version after downloading a large microsoft package.

The paid for version comes with the pe boot bundled.

pe versions are better, because they tend to work with all hardware and are more windows like, but if the free linux version works (ie boots, and see's external drives) on your machine, it does the job, and is far simpler to create. It works on most machines.


haven't used it on any uefi machines yet, but I suspect the answer is c partition, but my preference is to do them all, recovery/diagnostics are generally tiny in comparison to c and data

Jivesinger

I found when I tried Macrium Free a few months ago that only the pe version would boot in UEFI mode, so I'd use that in a UEFI PC.

anotheruser

Alternatively, don't bother creating this image lark and what not.

For the average consumer, you won't need to create an image of your PC and even if you did, you probably wouldn't know how to restore it.

I have my PC set up completely different to everyone else but generally you should only think about your documents. I back those up once a year, maybe in two places - DVD and external hard drive.
Music, Photos, Documents is all I back up. All my programs and games I can download and install again from online so there's no real point in backing those up - yes it would save time restoring but the cost of backing those up, plus the time it will take to actually back up, then restore, you'll find the difference time wise isn't that great.

Different people will recommend different backing up programs but they all come with bloat and rubbish that you simply don't need.

For the average consumer, a few DVDs and a simple "friendly" DVD burning program like ImgBurn will suffice. I know people who back up their documents and keep them at a safe deposit box at a bank. But then the bank could burn down. DVDs could scratch, external hard drives could corrupt after a slight bang.

The real question to answer is are you backing up things that you never want to lose or a bunch of crap that you have accumulated over time?

grumpycrab

anotheruser wrote: »

For the average consumer, you won't need to create an image of your PC

Disagree. The average consumer's hard disk fails (s/w or h/w) just as often as anybody elses.

anotheruser wrote: »

generally you should only think about your documents. I back those up once a year,

In my opinion you should be backing up docs/images as frequently as you create them (once a day, once a week) or why not in real-time?