There are no two ways about it, and it can’t be said often enough: Computer owners need to back up their data. The First Rule of Computing is: Backups are not optional. Whatever data you collect on your computer needs to be copied elsewhere so it can be restored if needed.
And the Second Rule of Computing is: Backups are useless if data can’t be restored. Computer owners need to test their ability to restore data.
Sometimes I hear something along the lines of, “That laptop is one my kids use, there’s nothing on it that needs to be kept. They might have some of their lessons and schoolwork, and play games, but that’s all.” This leads to the Third Rule of Computing, which is: All computer data matters, and all of it needs to be backed up. It’s easy for the computer-owning parent in this example to dismiss the need for a backup; but if their child needed to resubmit a paper (for example), they’ll regret not backing it up.
How you go about backing up your data will depend on what you do with your computer. If you don’t have many applications installed on it, and keep a modest number of documents, photos, etc. on it, then all you may need is to backup your own user profile.
The process of doing this is more or less identical on Windows and Mac OS computers:
It really is just that easy! Restoring data works in reverse of this: Connect the backup drive, then drag files or folders to the appropriate locations on the computer’s own drive.
You may think saving your backups to a device on your network (whether a NAS, aka network-attached storage, or another computer) would be a good idea, but it’s not, and for the same reason we don’t advocate leaving your external backup drive plugged into a computer. If data is live and connected to the computer, it can be deleted, corrupted, or worst of all, encrypted by ransomware.
Both Windows and Mac OS computers have built-in backup tools. The former has Windows Backup and the latter has Time Machine. These offer more complete copying of data; entire drive partitions can be backed up this way. They also are not copies of the files themselves; instead, they save the data in only one large, collective file (or a small group of them). This reduces the risk involved in leaving the medium that houses the backup connected to the computer.
Here’s how to go about this, on Windows computers:
That’s all there is to it. It’s not much harder than the simple file-copy backup.
Mac OS computers have a powerful tool called Time Machine. It’s not just a backup, it can also do reversion (i.e. revert a file to a previous state). Here’s how to set it up on Mac OS computers:
Note, the time of day you set up Time Machine is when daily backups will be done. You might want to do so as late in the day as possible. This will cause backups to be done at the end of the day, so the state of files saved will always reflect the end of day.
There are many third-party backup titles available for both Mac OS and Windows computers. Because of its power and versatility, the ease of setting it up, its low overhead, and its reversion capability, we recommend Mac OS users take advantage of Time Machine and not use anything else.
Windows users are a different story. While Backup and Restore is easy to set up, its features are limited. You might prefer a backup tool which, like Time Machine on Macs, saves a complete image of a drive partition, and/or has its own reversion capability.
A third-party backup software title we recommended is Acronis True Image. You can find it here: https://www.acronis.com/en/products/true-image/
Also, some external USB drives are sold with a free license for a specific version of True Image which the drive manufacturer makes available on their Web site. It can only be installed and used if a drive from that manufacturer and which is eligible for it, is installed on the computer.
A drive manufacturer may also offer other backup software or utilities. Check the literature that comes with the drive, to find out what’s available. You may have to enter the model and serial number of the drive on the company’s Web site, to find out.
Whichever software you use, follow the developer’s instructions to set up a backup. (We’d love to provide directions right here, but there are too many possible titles and they can change often.)
The Second Rule of Computing states that backups are useless if data can’t be restored. This means it’s not enough simply to schedule backups. You have to monitor them and also be sure you can restore files, if needed.
Monitoring means, you check the state of your backups to be sure they’re as current as needed. Home users don’t usually need hourly backups, and sometimes not even daily backups. But if you find it’s been a week or more since backups were done, you’ve got a problem that needs to be solved.
Also, it pays to know how restoration works, and to try it out once in a while. You need restoration to be reliable.
Restoration from a user-profile file-copy backup is simple, and it’s the opposite of backing up data. You just drag files off the backup drive and onto the computer’s drive.
Restoration from Windows Backup is also easy:
Restoring from Time Machine on a Mac is an interesting experience. To do that:
This is easily one of the most elegant things you’ll ever see on your computer.
Note, some Mac OS applications have a connection into Time Machine itself. They will have a “Revert To” option in their File menus. This will allow you to retrieve older versions of a file directly within the application.
Many people erroneously think syncing data with the “cloud” (Google Drive, Onedrive, Dropbox, etc.) is a way to backup their data. Microsoft explicitly refers to Onedrive syncing as a computer backup (see below about the latest Windows Backup).
But, cloud syncing is not a backup! It might be a convenient way to mirror your data in an additional location, but that’s exactly what it is: A mirror. If you remove a synced file from your computer, it will also be removed from the cloud. You will not be able to use that “cloud” copy to restore the file, if for some reason you want it back. By the time you realize you mistakenly deleted the file and try to get it out of the “cloud,” it’ll already be gone.
Confusingly, the newest version of Windows Backup on Windows 11 computers, uses Onedrive as a storage location, and calls itself a “backup” of your data. It is not a true backup, however, because it depends on cloud syncing. This is why we suggest using instead (and as described above, already) the “Windows 7” edition of Windows Backup (called Backup and Restore).
Also, your file system’s own “Recycle Bin” or “Trash Bin” is not a backup. These special locations can only hold so much data at a time; as time goes by, as more and more files are deleted, deleted files literally drop out of it, and are no longer there to be retrieved. A good rule of thumb is that you can count on getting a file back from the Recycle Bin only if it was deleted a couple of days ago. Beyond that, you may still be able to get the file back, but you can’t rely on being able to do so.