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Even within brand names, some records are better than others. Several of our Gear friends have had good luck with Western Digital hard drives. I like this 4 terabyte model ($ 90 Amazon, $ 95 on Target), which will back up this article later tonight (when I’m writing it backs up to the fog, more in a minute). If you don’t mind a bigger form factor, there’s the “desktop” version of Western Digital 6 terabytes, which isn’t much more ($ 141 on Amazon, $ 155 at Walmart).
When it comes to backing up your data, it’s a good idea not to worry about disk speed. The 5,400 rpm slow drive is also fine. These slower drives are cheaper and since the backup software runs in the background, you probably won’t notice a slower speed.
Get the most backup you can afford. Incremental backups — this is how all good backup software works — save disk space by backing up files that have changed since the last backup. However, you need a larger disk to back up than the one on your computer. A good rule of thumb is to get a backup that is twice or three times the size of your computer drive.
Set and Forget
A good backup system is made without you having to do anything. If you need to make a backup, you probably won’t. Today, there is software that can automate all your backup tasks.
Mac users should use Time Machine. It’s a wonderfully simple software and perhaps the best reason to buy a Mac. Apple has good instructions How to configure the Time Machine so that it will make daily backups to the external hard drive. The Time Machine is also intelligent; it will only back up files that have changed, so it won’t eat up all of your disk space.
Windows 10 is shipped with what Microsoft calls “Backup,” but it doesn’t lack the clarity of the Time Machine interface, and it doesn’t seem to be meant for daily backups. While many of the features of the Time Machine are in Backup, guessing them is no small feat. For the simplicity of Windows Time Machine, you will need to turn to third-party software. I was lucky Macrium Reflected, with a free option that does everything you need.
Off-site backups: all of a sudden
The second backup I suggest is on the outside. It’s just another way of saying what marketing departments call “the cloud,” “someone else’s computer.” In this case, I mean a server in a data center that is far from your home. This is a backup that covers a horrific scenario of physical destruction. For example, I lost a laptop when struck by lightning (yes I had an anti-crisis protector, it was quite liquid), but since my data was protected in the cloud, I was able to recover everything.
What you don’t want is something like Dropbox, Google Drive or Sync.com. They’re all great ways to share and sync documents, but they’re not good for backups. When you change a file on your computer, those changes are synced to Dropbox. This means that if a file is corrupted, the corruption will be sent to Dropbox and downloaded through all your backups. That’s not what you want. A good backup never changes. After copying the file, it is not touched again.
Fortunately, there are many cloud backup solutions available. Some are unified: register, download the service app, and you’re done. This is what we propose for newcomers.
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