Four Solutions to Make Your Backup Copies or 'backups'

Do not lose anything again, a blackout can be the definitive scare that ends with the photos and important documents that you have on your computer.

Every day we store more sensitive or important files on our computers, including photos, videos, and important documents. This is why a blackout at the most inopportune moment, a blow, or an accident can leave us without all that data and cause us more than one headache. In extreme cases, if the information was vital, we could even pay large amounts of money to try to recover it.

Therefore, making backup copies should be a much more widespread practice.

Here are four different ways to keep your files safe. But basically, making a backup is just copying our files to another site.

1. An External Hard Drive

The first thing you will need to make a 'backup' or backup copy of the files on your computer is an external drive. With a 1 or 2 TB hard drive it will be enough if what you usually save are photos, music, or videos that you make of your special moments.

The easiest way to make your backups, but the most enslaving, is by hand. Put on a calendar and stick to it: every Sunday night, for example, copy the new files to an external hard drive and always have them stored in two places, both on the computer itself and off.

2. Install a Program on Your Computer

If you do not feel capable of fulfilling the task of backing up your data weekly, a program can automatically do it for you. The best thing you can do is ask among your friends what programs they usually use for this or go to a computer store, where they can advise you. In Windows, there are many free utilities like SyncBack. And on Mac, you can use the built-in 'Time Machine' application, which requires no configuration.

When choosing how to back up, you have several options. These two are the most common and practical.

• Simple copy. Take the files only once to the external hard drive.
• Mirror copy. Every time you modify something in one of the two locations, the other will stay the same. We recommend this type of copy.
• Copies with version history. They keep multiple copies of each file, so if, for example, you overwrite by mistake, you can go back to the previous one.

The backup programs only insert the new files. All those that have not been modified remain intact to save time.

3. Get a Hard Drive That Makes Copies

Many manufacturers of external hard drives integrate software in your computer to make copies. It is the easiest method if you don't want to try other options. Simply, install the CD or download the application provided and configure the frequency with which you want to perform the 'backups': daily, weekly, monthly ...

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4. Cloud Options

Every day more services make backup copies in the cloud. 'Google Drive' goes that way, given that it lowered its rates and offers 15 GB of free space, and has options of up to 1 TB. You can also use Dropbox, OneDrive, or other providers, once you have compared and found the one that best suits your needs.

Saving in the cloud has advantages, such as availability anywhere and that we don't need to do a manual or automatic backup. You can have a copy locally and another in the cloud simultaneously. However, the files are on the Internet and we are paying rent for that space.