How to Backup Files on Your Computer

The introduction of computers and the internet has indeed made our lives easier. Important files such as pictures, downloaded songs from the internet, emails and even journals are now stored in our computer's hard drive. This has somehow taken care of the clutter of paper and journals and photo albums. But computers are known to crash and fail and when it does, all our files go crashing down with it.

How to Backup the Files

How to backup files in your computer can be quite simple. It is important though not to create the backup in the same hard drive because when the hard drive itself fails, the backup files cannot be extracted or saved. Choose an external storage device such as a CD or an external hard disk drive that you can connect to your computer via a USB cable. You can either manually create the back up file in the external drives or schedule automatic weekly back ups.

Here's how to back up files in your computer manually. First go to the Start button on your computer. Then go to programs, next go to accessories. Next, go to system tools and then click on backup. This should bring up the wizard for creating back up files for your computer. The wizard will prompt you to either back up or restore files on your computer. It will also ask what files you want to create the back up on and where to save the information. After the wizard successfully finishes creating the back up files, it will prompt you to close the application or program.

Schedule Automatic Updates

To schedule automatic weekly backup files on your computer, you will have to use the same back up wizard from the manual back up procedure from the system tools menu. The only difference is between the manual back up and the automatic set up is that when the wizard finishes creating the back up files, instead of clicking on close to end the program, you have to click on the advance button on the Completing the Backup or Restore Wizard page. On the advance button, you will have the option to set up the schedule on when your computer will create the backup files and where to create or save the back up files. It is important to schedule the back up during times when you are not using the computer. You can also schedule to have the computer wake up or turn on when it is time to create the back up files.

Store The Backups

Once you have created the back up file, it is important to store this external drive or CD in a safe place in order to protect it from thieves or in case of fire or property damage. That's why when creating a back up file; it is advisable to create a second back up file in case the first one encounters a problem.