It’s always a good idea to backup your data, as a hard drive is the most common device of your computer to fail, and always seems to fail at the most inconvenient time. Before running any diagnostics, removing any spyware and viruses, or just as a “just in case,” I recommend that you backup your important data. First, lets go over the pros and cons of the possible backup devices:

Backup Device	Pros	Cons
CD/DVD Discs	-Easy to use -Readable by all PCs -Easy to keep track of seperate backups	-Unreliable Storage, damaged easily -Uses one disc every backup as rewritable discs are even less reliable -Not easy to do automatic backups
USB External Hard Drive	-Large Amount of Storage -Very Fast -Can easily be setup for automatic backups -Readable by all USB enabled Windows PCs	-Hard Drives fail easily, especially external ones due to heat and spin-up/down counts -Space on drive can fill up quickly if you do separate backups each time rather than an incremental backup
Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a server	-Backup multiple PCs -Easy to do automatic backups (such as daily backups)	-High price per gigabyte, and a lot of storage required when backing up many PCs -Slow on WiFi -Many consumer NAS devices are buggy, yet configuring a standalone PC as a NAS can be complicated
Flash Drive	-Very reliable, no mechanical parts and no burned discs -Fairly fast -Can do automatic backups if the flash drive is always left in the PC	-Easy to lose -Not a lot of storage space
Tape Drive	-Holds a lot of data	-Very Expensive -Not as reliable as a flash drive -Not easy to configure in most operating systems as native support is lacking
Remote Storage	-Usually offers large amount of storage -Very safe if the company has multiple servers in multiple locations	-Monthly fee
RAID 1/5 Array	-Great for a solution that you can completely forget about -Provides protection against one drive failing	-No protection against fire/flood/etc. as the data is only stored in one place -More drives are needed, increasing cost of PC -Windows installation may be difficult due to drivers

As a result, my recommendation for data that is very important is a RAID 1 or 5 array to begin with, and a flash drive, external USB hard drive, or Network Attached Storage/server for extra backups. I will not go into specifics about RAID, but basically RAID 1 mirrors the data on a system with two identical hard drives. So, if you have two 250GB hard drives in RAID 1, you would only get 250GB of storage, but both drives would have the exact same data on them in case one fails. RAID 5 uses three or more hard drives. You get the storage space of the total of the drives minus the space on one drive. However, if one drive fails, you can simply replace it and the array will be automatically rebuilt.

If you do not have a lot of data, or it is all in one place (such as one user on the PC with all important data stored in the My Documents folder) then I would recommend using a flash drive for backups. Simply insert the flash drive, open up your My Documents folder and highlight all of the files in there. Now, right click on the files, put your mouse over the words “Send To” and then click on the flash drive. Usually it will say something like “Removable Disk (E:).” Be sure to use a flash drive large enough to hold all of your data. If you have a lot of data, an external hard drive will work in the same way but hold much more. However, you will lose reliability in exchange for storage space with and external hard drive.

The other option is to backup to DVDs. Simply use your recording software such as Roxio, Nero, Sonic or ImgBurn (download link to the left) to create a Data DVD. Drag your folders and documents over to the burning software. Be sure to watch how much storage space is used on the disc and be careful not to go over the maximum your disc will hold. Only Roxio’s Creator Classic software will automatically span multiple discs if you have more than 4.7GB (or 8.5GB if using a Dual Layer disc) of data. Due to the Roxio’s method of organizing the discs, software must be installed to recover the files, and as a result I wouldn’t suggest using Roxio’s multi-disc spanning feature.

I strongly recommend creating automatic backups of your data. The best way I have found to do this is with a program called Cobian Backup 9. It is a free application that does an excellent job of automatically backing up your data to a flash drive, external hard drive, or a non-password protected network share. This program runs as a service, is very lightweight and does a terrific job of both being easy to configure and use. Simply download the program from the link to the left and install it. In the main user window, right click on the open white rectangle at the left and choose New Task. The following screen will popup. Be sure to change the settings to be the same as below. By setting the program to do an Incremental backup and unchecking the option to create separate backups, Cobian Backup will automatically keep an up to date copy of your files on the backup media:

Click on Files to choose both your files you want backed up and the destination. In this case, I am backing up my entire Documents/Pictures/Music/etc. folders to a network share. You can also choose a drive such a a flash drive or external hard drive if you would like:

Then, proceed to the schedule screen, and set a schedule for running the automatic backup. Click OK, right click on the newly created task, and click Run Selected Tasks. The backup will begin. At this point you can right click on it again, select Edit Task, and then change it from a Full backup to an Incremental backup. This means it will only backup files that have changed or been created from the last backups on all following backups.

Of course you will want to check your backup device to make sure the files did actually get copied to it once the initial full backup finishes.