Back up Media

The next question you need to consider is: what is the best media to back up your files from your hard drive?   In other words, what are you going to back up your files onto? 

For just a data file back up, blank CD-Rewritable’s or Zip Drives will work just fine.  They are cheap and easily replaceable.  The benefit of using a CD-Rewritable over just a CD-Writeable is that you can erase and copy over the same CD, much like you can with a floppy disk. 

Don’t even think about 3.5 inch floppy disks (if your computer even has a floppy drive anymore).  It would literally take hundreds of them to do a back up.  In fact, if you have a large hard drive (40GB or greater) and have many files, you will still need to use several CDs too. 

Now a hard drive back up is a different story.  So, what is the best media to back up a 120GB, 200GB, 300GB or larger hard drive today? Another hard drive!  External hard drives are much faster than CD’s and zip drives – you can back up an entire 20GB hard drive in less than an hour or so. Since it is fast, you'll tend to back up your system more often and this means better protection for you.

External hard drives are also relatively inexpensive to purchase (especially when you weigh it against the cost of replacing all your lost files – do I need to paint another gruesome picture?).  My favorite place to shop for hardware is TigerDirect.com.  They offer very competitive pricing, great sales, and wonderful support. 

At TigerDirect.com, just type in External Hard Drives and look for one that is at least large as the hard drive on your computer.  If your hard drive is pretty full, or you anticipate that it will be, buy an external hard drive that is twice as large as your current hard drive.  That’s because when you do your back ups, you will back it up in two different locations.  More on that later in the tip below.

Please note: What I am recommending has proven to be the easiest way for me to do back ups.  I am not saying that there aren’t other ways – there are plenty.  But I’ve found these to be pretty simple. 

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