Different Ways to Back Up Your Files and Data

There are many ways to back up your data, from using an external drive to backing up those files on a remote server over the Internet.

• Back Up Your data/ files to an External Drive: 
• If you have an external USB hard drive, you can just back up to that drive using your computer’s built-in backup features. 
• On Windows 10 and 8, use ‘File History’.  
• On Windows 7, use “Windows Backup”. 
• On Macs, use “Time Machine”. Occasionally connect the drive to the computer and use the backup tool, or leave it plugged in whenever your home and it’ll back up automatically. 

Using a Cloud Storage Service: 

 you can store your data on a service like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud or a similar cloud storage service. These will then automatically sync to your online account and to your other PCs. If your hard drive dies, you’ll still have the copies of the files stored online and on your other computers. 

This method is easy, fast, and in many cases, free, and since it’s online, it protects you against all types of data loss. 

Back Up Over the Internet: 

If you want to ensure your files stay safe, you can back them up to the internet with a service like Backblaze.  Backblaze is the well-known online backup service you like. There are also competitors like Carbonite. For a low monthly fee (about $5 a month), these programs run in the background on your PC or Mac, automatically backing up your files to the service’s web storage. If you ever lose those files and need them again, you can restore them. These services usually cost money and the initial backup can take much longer than it would on an external drive especially if you have a lot of files.

Backblaze and Carbonite have one big limitation that you should keep in mind. If you delete a file on your computer, it will be deleted from your online backups after 30 days. You can’t go back and recover a deleted file or the previous version of a file after this 30 day period. So be careful when deleting those files if you might want them back!

While backup programs like Backblaze and cloud storage services like Google Drive are both online backups, they work in fundamentally different ways. Google Drive is designed to sync your files between PCs, while Backblaze and similar services are designed to backup large amounts of files.