By Jack Cutts

Last weekend I almost did the unthinkable: I came within a hair’s breadth of deleting all of my digital photos including the pictures of my wedding. I would’ve lost most of my digital music and tax records as well! Unspeakable horror awaits any man who commits such a transgression.

Sure, it started innocently enough. I was getting ready to install the “Release Candidate” of Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system when something in the install process didn’t agree with my hardware. After a few more tries, it was clear that things weren’t going to work as planned. Putting that task aside, I decided just to revert to my old installation of Windows Vista. No dice. The installation had permanently altered my disk partitions and it was as if the computer had undergone a lobotomy.

After the palpitations and nausea subsided, I remembered the trusty backup drive I had purchased just a month prior. This one-terabyte external drive was the perfect insurance policy against doing something stupid and I am very glad I took the time to set it up.

There are more than a few ways to back up a hard drive and there are two main considerations to make when conducting a backup – hardware and software. On the hardware side of the equation, one of the most common backup methods involves installing a second hard drive inside your PC and periodically dragging and dropping files over to the backup drive. This method works well, but since the hard drive is still inside the computer (and virtually always on), it’s somewhat more prone to failure.

Another method that has become extremely popular in the last few years is to purchase an external hard drive. These drives usually feature USB 2.0 or eSATA connectivity and are portable. Another class of external drives (”network attached storage” or “NAS”) will connect to the Ethernet network in your home and allow data backups from any computer on your home network. The speed of writing files to these drives is generally slower than using an internal drive but external drives can be moved from computer to computer and also only consume power when turned on.

A third option requires no hardware at all. “Cloud storage” – as it’s become known – involves online backup and remote storage of your files. Virtually all cloud storage providers charge a monthly fee and do not offer quite as much space to store files as a local solution would offer but users also can gain access to their files anywhere they have a connection to the Internet. For those who have only a few gigabytes of files to backup, cloud storage is a fairly low-maintenance and powerful solution.

On the software side of the equation, user can choose the “drag-and-drop” method of file copying that we’re all used to by now, or you can buy one of a number of applications specifically designed to make backing up easier. At home, I use a program called Acronis True Image. Imaging a hard drive is a powerful way of backing up because it not only preserves your files, it also preserves the entire state of your computer including all operating system files, installed programs and other settings.

One final thing to consider is that even with an external hard drive, none of your data is truly safe if something happens to the hard drive. At home, I store my backup hard drive in a fire-proof safe under lock and key along with my passport, birth certificate, and other important items. While this might seem paranoid, it offers peace of mind and one less thing to worry about.

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