How to Back up Your Computer - Quickly and Simply

Applies to: Windows 98/ME/XP/Vista/Windows 7

Article aimed at: Novice Users

Level of expertise required: Basic

You can see a video demonstration of these steps in the video at the bottom of this page.

When was the last time you backed up your PC? Whenever you remember? Me too, up until a few years ago when I lost everything after my PC's hard drive died.

So now I recommend (sometimes I actually insist!) that clients back up their computer's important files on a regular basis. This page covers how to do this simply, and without any effort. You just need a few minutes to set it up. So let's get going.

Software. The main problem with backups that you run yourself is that you'll forget to do it most of the time, so that's why we have backup software to remember for us. I use a small, free piece of software called Cobian - download it free here:

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Step 1

Run the install program. When the screen asks you questions such as where to install or what options to use, just accept the suggested settings until you see a confirmation that the program installed correctly:

Step 2

Open the program by right-clicking the red mushroom and clicking open.

Step 3

Now we need to tell the computer what to back up and when. So, click Task > New Task. Enter a name such as "weekly computer backup"

Step 4

Click files > Add > Directory. Now you can choose what files we want to back up. For me, I will just select "My Documents" because this folder encompasses My Pictures, My Music and My Videos. If this doesn't apply to you, just navigate to the correct folders and choose what you want to take a backup of. You can repeat this step until you have selected every area on your computer that you wish to back up.

Step 5

Now we need to tell it where to copy the files to. This could simply be another location on your computer, but it should ideally be to a different hard drive or a USB flash drive, but you will need to make sure that whatever you use is plugged in for the backup to work. Click Add > Directory and select where you want the files to be copied too.

IMPORTANT NOTE. You should consider taking a copy of the backup every so often and putting it somewhere for safe keeping, or even setting the destination to another computer on your network, if you have one.

Step 6

Now click schedule. Here you can select when the backup should run. I would recommend daily or weekly, but you can adjust this as you see fit. I will select for my backups to run weekly, every Saturday at 4:45pm - about the time that I'll be out walking the dogs!