How To Back Up Your Hard Drive

This will ensure that you can recover your operating system and the applications that you have installed, rather than go through the process of reinstalling all your programs after reformatting your hard drive. Below are some tips on how to back up a hard drive.

• If your computer is running on a Windows XP, the installation package comes with a Windows XP Backup. It should be installed in your computer. Locate it and open it. The wizard will take you through the process on how to make a back up of your hard drive and choose which applications you want to include as well as where you want the back up to be stored. You have to make sure that the data you are going to back up is not corrupted as this will not be of use when the need arises.
• On a Mac computer you can look for the Time Machine application. The process is very much like the back up utility found in a Windows computer. You can set up a profile for the back up copy of your hard drive. You can also specify where you want to create the back up, whether you want to store it within your system or to external data storage.
• If you have limited storage space on your computer and your partitions are allocated to your files, you can make a back up of your hard drive by using any of the external data storage devices that are available. You can use a flash drive or thumb drive, burn a copy of your hard drive on a DVD or create a bootable copy so that it will be easier to install your back up copy. A hard drive file size may be several gigabytes so make sure that you will create a back up on an external device that can store all the files that you have chosen to back up.
• Cloud storage is another way for you to back up your hard drive. This is done virtually. There are websites that offer to store your data for free but it can be limited to a few gigabytes. Some sites will ask you to pay a small amount for larger storage space. Even with some security measures in place, make sure that the data in your hard drive that you want to store in cloud storage do not contain personal information that can be accessed by hackers.
• You can also create a back up of your hard drive and store it in a server, if you have access to one. This will ensure that your back up copy is in a safe location and will be readily available if you need to restore your data.