External Hard Drive

Files can be copied manually across to an external hard drive by means of copy/paste or drag/drop - see here for guide on how to do this

Or you can automate the backup process by using software such as the tool I have written Backup Assist which will automatically back up all your data for you (available free for PC Assist @ Home customers), or other tools such as Windows Backup (Windows XP, Vista & 7) or File History (Windows 8/10/11)

The possible issues with this method are that external hard disks can suffer the same failure as the hard disk in your PC resulting in corruption or loss of your data

If backing up to an external hard drive then DO NOT leave it permanently connected and powered on, as if your computer gets infected with a nasty virus then it could potentially access the external hard drive and delete or corrupt your backup

Also don't store the external hard disk near the computer, as if your computer is stolen they could take external drive too, defeating the point of having a backup - this could also apply in case of fire/flooding etc

I would advise not using USB memory sticks or flash drives for data backup as these can easily be lost or wiped

Recommended External Hard Drives: Lacie or Seagate or SanDisk SSD

Online Backup (also known as Cloud Backup)

Benefits of online backup over the above solutions is that you do not have to remember to do anything, all files you create or modify are backed up automatically at all times without any user input, so you can rest in the knowledge that all of your files are safe

The solution I recommend is iDrive - more information and links to the relevant website can be found below

With this solutions all your files are securely encrypted and backed up to servers in an off-site data center, so you are fully protected from loss of data caused by virus (such as cryptolocker), hard drive failure, fire or theft. And if the worst did happen all your files can easily be restored to a new computer or hard drive

Other benefits are that your backed up files can be accessed from any other computer or even on your phone/tablet using the iPhone/Android apps, so wherever you are in the world if you need to access an important file you can

All recommended backup providers are fully GDPR compliant

iDrive offer 5Gb for free, 2Tb for $69.50 a year or 5Tb for $99.50 a year - both cover unlimited computers

To order click the link below:-

CD / DVD

Using the CD/DVD writing software supplied with your computer you can back up any files you wish to blank CD's or DVD's

The main problem with this method is that you have to do it manually so it can easily be forgotten or not done. Also the media is then normally stored near the computer so could be lost in case of fire/theft, and finally the media does not last forever and could be unreadable in years to come when you need to access it

The benefit of this method though is blank CD/DVD's are cheap, so you can easily make several copies of your data and store them in different locations - which is handy especially if the files you are backing up are very important to you

I would recommend this method if you don't have many files that you wish to backup.  If you have lots of music/photos etc then writing them all to CD/DVD could be quite time consuming so one of the other options below would be more suitable for you

Information on using the most common CD/DVD writing software can be found here