It's
a cost-effective and convenient way to back up data with external hard
drives. Data backup is to computer what brake is to car. Data backup is
an important factor to keep computer in normal. You can’t take any risk
of the loss of valuable data, because some data are irreplaceable and
irreparable. There’re many backup solutions for you: back up to CD or
DVD disc, to online services, to external hard drives, or back up with
professional backup software. Here, let’s take a look on backing up data
with external hard drives.
External
hard drives are very easy to use to back up data, expand computers’
storage capacity and share data between computers. There’re several
categories like portable hard drives, desktop drives and multiple hard
drives. Regardless of whether you’re a Windows user or a Mac user,
you’ll need to know how to backup data with external hard drives.
Detailed guidance to back up data with external hard drives will be
listed below.
First
of all, select a proper external hard drive. There’re all kinds of hard
drives on the market, expensive or cheap, large or small capacity. It
really dazzles us. For price, we shouldn’t try to select the cheapest
drive. Once external hard drives fail, data will be taken with it. As
for storage space, you’d better choose a drive with about twice the
capacity of your computer to back up entire system of your computer.
Once
external hard drive get ready, connect it to your computer via any port
you prefer—be it USB, FireWire or ThunderBolt. Windows and Mac will
prompt to you if you want to take the external hard drive as a backup
when you plug it in computer at the first time. Choose yes, if that
happens.
But if you’re not directed to use the external hard drive as a backup, please take several clicks as follows.
Mac: Go to System Preferences > Time Machine, hit “Select Backup Disk” and choose your external drive.
Windows:
Open the Start Menu, hit “Control Panel” and choose “Backup and
Restore”. If you have never used this tool before, you'll notice a
message under “Backup” that says “Windows Backup has not been set up”.
Click the link labeled “Set up backup” to the right of that message. And
then select the drive that you just plugged in and click “Next” until
you reach the final window. On the last window, click “Save Settings and
Run Backup.” The backup progress will takes long time to finish,
because it’s the first time full backup.
After
setting backup, you can just set it and forget it, because it will
automatically back up data whenever your drive is plugged in.
External
hard drive is really a great way to protect data, because it’s
cost-effective and convenient. However, external hard drives can’t be
immune to some disasters like fire, flood, earthquake, and so much. To
reduce such kind of fear, cloud storage service emerges as the times
require.
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