Back Up Windows Desktop

tony6403

I have copied my photos and music to DVDs but I do not have anything else saved.
I have considered getting an external hard drive but don't know which to buy.
Could I simply transfer all the data to a USB stick ?
If a hard drive is essential - which one would be best and would I need software to proceed?
My Windows 7 PC has 250 GB and 170 GB of that is free.
Grateful for any advice.

googler

tony6403 wrote: »

I have copied my photos and music to DVDs but I do not have anything else saved.
I have considered getting an external hard drive but don't know which to buy.

What else do you want to save? What other data do you have? Word docs? Spreadsheets? Text files? etc?

If you have Windows install disc(s) or a recovery partition, you don't need to back up the OS.

bengalknights

Personally i would go with a cloud solution like google drive or one drive

Fightsback

I'd recommend getting an external drive, 500GB can be had for about £30 including case, and doing a full image back up as this is a huge time and convenience saver should things go wrong. There are plenty of free imaging back up solutions which are much better than the built in Windows one.

I don't recommend using USB sticks or SD cards for back up due to their high failure rate.

grumpycrab

tony6403 wrote: »

[backing up data files under Windows 7]

You've used DVDs so far and you're not sure if you've backed up all of your data files.
The 2 simplest options are to either copy all of C:\users\tony (or whatever your username is) to USB (or external drive) or use Windows backup to do it for you.
Windows backup is worth a go as it will introduce you to the idea of doing regular (scheduled) backups.
Here's a guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jih9HukwI

You may get all your data files on USB but an external hard drive may be faster/more reliable. Search hotukdeals for good prices (minimum requirement is USB3 and 1TB).

psychic_teabag

Fightsback wrote: »

I don't recommend using USB sticks or SD cards for back up due to their high failure rate.

Agreed, and also I have found DVD's to be relatively error-prone - cannot read after a couple of years. That said, I do use DVD's for my backups too, but rotate between several.

if you are doing a full image backup, but only have enough storage for one copy, then during the backup process itself, you have zero copies. Having space for a couple of images means you can rotate between them.