The Importance of Backups

There are no two ways about it, and it can’t be said often enough: Computer owners need to back up their data. The First Rule of Computing is that backups are not optional. Whatever data you collect on your computer needs to be copied elsewhere so it can be restored if needed.

The Second Rule of Computing is that backups are useless if the data cannot be restored. You need to test your ability to restore your data.

Sometimes, I hear something like, “That laptop is the one my kids use; nothing on it needs to be backed up. They might have some of their schoolwork, lessons, and games, but that’s all.” This leads to the Third Rule of Computing: All computer data matters and needs to be backed up. In this example, it’s easy for the computer-owning parent to dismiss the need for a backup, but if their child needs to resubmit a paper (for example), they’ll regret not backing it up.

Planning Your Backup Scheme

How you back up your data will depend on what you do with your computer. If you don’t have many applications installed and keep a modest number of documents, photos, etc., you may only need to back up your user profile.

The Simple User-Profile File-Copy Backup

The process of doing this is more or less identical on Windows and Mac OS computers:

1. Obtain an external drive to be used only for backup
   1. This will often be an external USB drive
   2. Small USB sticks are not good candidates because they can get damaged, fail, or lost
   3. An actual external hard drive in sturdy housing is the best choice
2. Connect the external drive to your computer
3. In Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, open it up
   1. In Explorer or Finder, locate your user data folders (Documents, Pictures, Video, Music, etc.)
4. In Explorer or Finder, drag those folders to the external drive
5. If prompted to allow files to be rewritten or overwritten, do so
6. When all files in all those folders have been copied over, remove the external drive
   1. Put the external drive in a safe place
   2. Make sure you can get to it easily if you need to restore anything
   3. Removal of the drive is necessary because the data on the drive is theoretically in danger as long as it’s connected to a running computer.
      

It really is that easy! Restoring data works in reverse. Connect the backup drive, then drag the files or folders to the appropriate locations on the computer’s drive.

You may think saving your backups to a device on your network (whether a NAS, aka network-attached storage, or another computer) would be a good idea, but it’s not. We don’t advocate leaving your external backup drive plugged into a computer for the same reason. If data is live and connected to the computer, it can be deleted, corrupted, or, worse, encrypted by ransomware.

Built-In Backup Tools

Both Windows and Mac OS computers have built-in backup tools. The former has Windows Backup, and the latter has Time Machine. These offer a more complete process for copying data. Entire drive partitions can be backed up this way. They also are not copies of the files themselves; instead, they save the data in one large, collective file (or a small group of them). This reduces the risk of leaving the medium that houses the backup connected to the computer.

Complete the backup process on a Windows computer:

1. Obtain an external drive or decide on a storage location on your network (such as on a NAS device)
   1. Be sure it has more than enough space to hold the entire contents of your compute
2. For an external drive, plug it in.
3. For a device on your network, make sure it’s available
4. Open Control Panel and run Backup and Restore (Windows 7), then click Set up backup
5. Select the destination of your backup, then click Next
6. Select what you want to be backed up (either your user profile, other users’ profiles, or the entire drive), then click Next or Save Settings
7. Set a schedule for the backup and run the backup now
   

That’s all there is to it. It’s not much harder than the simple file-copy backup.

Complete the backup process on a Mac computer:

Mac OS computers have a powerful tool called Time Machine. It’s not just a backup; it can also do reversion (i.e., revert a file to a previous state). Here’s how to set it up on Mac OS computers:

1. Obtain an external drive and plug it in, or connect to a network file share using SMB
   1. Whatever you save backups to must be at least twice the size of your Mac’s drive
   2. This is due to versioning data that’s stored on it; the backup itself will grow in size well beyond what’s on the drive itself.
   3. All of this extra data is what allows you to return a file to any one of many different prior states.
   4. That means it’s worth it to pay a little more and get a very large drive
2. Click on the Apple menu at the top left > System Preferences (or System Settings) > General > Time Machine
3. Click Add Backup Disk or click the Add button (a plus sign)
4. Choose your external drive, then click Set Up Disk
5. Select all space available to use for backups, select encryption, and click Done
6. If asked, allow the disk to be erased and enter a password for the encryption
7. The backups will commence. It will take some time for your entire Mac drive to be backed up. This process takes place in the background.
   

Note: The time of day you set up the Time Machine is when daily backups will occur. You might want to set up the Time Machine as late in the day as possible. This will cause backups to be done at the end of the day, so the state of files saved will always reflect that.

Third-Party Backup Software

Many third-party backup titles are available for Mac OS and Windows computers. Because of Time Machine’s power and versatility, ease of setup, low overhead, and reversion capability, we recommend Mac OS users take advantage of It and not use anything else.

Windows users are a different story. While Windows Backup is easy to set up, its features are limited. To save a complete image of a drive partition, you might prefer a backup tool like Time Machine.

At one time, we recommended Acronis True Image for this. While you can’t purchase just the full True Image product from Acronis anymore, you can get Acronis Cyber Protect, which has many features, including a True Image style backup tool. You can find it here: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/cyber-protect/

Some external USB drives are sold with a free license for a specific version of True Image. The drive manufacturer makes the license available on its website. The license can only be installed and used if the computer has an eligible drive from that manufacturer.

A drive manufacturer may also offer other backup software or utilities. Check the literature that comes with the drive to find out what’s available. You may have to enter the drive’s model and serial number on the company’s website to find out.

Whichever software you use, follow the developer’s instructions to set up the backup. (We’d love to provide directions right here, but there are too many possible titles, and they can change often.)

Backups Are Great, But Restoration Is the Key

The Second Rule of Computing states that backups are useless if data cannot be restored. This means it’s not enough to schedule backups; you have to monitor them and ensure you can restore files if needed.

Monitoring means checking the state of your backups to ensure they’re as current as needed. Home users don’t usually need hourly backups, and sometimes not even daily backups. But if you find it’s been a week or more since backups were done, you have a problem that needs solving.

Also, it pays to know how restoration works and to try it out occasionally. You need restoration to be reliable.

Restoration from a user-profile file-copy backup is simple and is the opposite of backing up data. You drag files off the backup drive and onto the computer’s drive.

Restoration from Windows Backup is easy:

1. Connect your backup drive
2. In Control Panel, open Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
3. On the left, you should see an option to restore data
4. Click that and follow the prompts to restore something (as a test)
   

Restoring from Time Machine on a Mac is an interesting experience:

1. Open the Time Machine app (in Applications)
2. The screen will become three-dimensional, showing you the state of your Mac’s drive at any given date/time, with each backup iteration being one of many windows you see
3. Move forward or back through them (or up and down using the slider to the right of the screen) to the date/time you want to go back to for a file.
4. Once you’ve clicked on the right backup window, browse through the drive (it’s just like Finder) and locate the file(s) you want to restore
5. Click on it/them, then click Restore.
6. The three-dimensional view will fly away, and you’ll be brought to Finder with the file(s) restored in the place it was when the backup image was taken.
   

This is easily one of the most elegant things you’ll ever see on your computer.

Note: Some Mac OS applications are connected to Time Machine. They will have a “Revert To” option in their File menus, which allows you to retrieve older file versions directly within the application.

File Syncing Is Not a Backup

Many people erroneously think syncing data with the “cloud” (Google Drive, Onedrive, Dropbox, etc.) is a way to back up their data. But it’s not! It might be a convenient way to mirror your data in an additional location, but that’s exactly what it is: A mirror. If you remove a synced file from your computer, it will also be removed from the cloud. You will not be able to use that “cloud” copy to restore the file if, for some reason, you want it back. By the time you realize you mistakenly deleted the file and try to get it out of the “cloud,” it’ll already be gone.

Confusingly, the newest version of Windows Backup on Windows 10 and 11 computers uses OneDrive as a storage location and calls itself a “backup” of your data. However, it is not a true backup because it depends on cloud syncing. We suggest using the “Windows 7” edition of Windows Backup instead (as described above).

Also, your file system’s “Recycle Bin” or “Trash Bin” is not a backup. These special locations can only hold so much data at a time; as time goes by, as more and more files are deleted, files literally drop out of the recycle bin or transit and are no longer there to be retrieved. A good rule of thumb is that you can count on getting a file back from the Recycle Bin only if it was deleted a few days ago. Beyond that, it can’t be relied on.