In short, the more information you store on your computer the more you have at risk if your computer fails. Because of this it is important to keep a backup of your important photos and documents so you can recover them if they are lost.
In future issues we’ll look at how you can backup your important files to an online service using your internet connection. However, even without subscribing to such a service it is possible to create your own personal backup of important files.
To do this you should store a duplicate of your important files on a disk which you can remove from your computer and store somewhere safe. This kind of disk is one that is connected to your computer by a cable – not built into it. There are various types of disks you can buy and use and these range from small USB or Flash drives to larger disks that connect to a computer via a USB cable.
This manual backup routine will be sufficient if you have only a few files and photos to back up. The benefit of backing up to an external drive like this is that you can take the drive with you, plug it into any other computer and the files will be there for you to use. One disadvantage is that it is vulnerable to theft and damage by fire and flood so you may want to store it somewhere safe away from the computer when you are not using it to back up your files.
