How to Back Up Your PC | Set Regular Backups Of Your Most Important Files

How to Back Up Your PC | Set Regular Backups Of Your Most Important Files

Backing up your PC is a very important task, but it's very easy to reject. To lose access to all the important files on your computer, you will only need a hardware failure, theft, accident or ransomware attack.

Fortunately, creating a backup doesn't have to be difficult or time-consuming, and if you give it some time now, you can automate the process so you never have to worry about it again. Then, if disaster strikes, everything will be there in anticipation of rehabilitation.

Our favorite software for the task is Easeus Todo Backup. There are free and premium versions of the software, but the free one will suffice for most standard home users.

The Premium version includes disk cloning tools, the ability to move the system to another PC, Outlook Backup and Recovery, and event-based backups (when you turn on the computer, for example), but you can still schedule backups. On-time using the free software, and restore it if needed.

Types of backups

There are three main ways to back up your files, and they all have their pros and cons. A full backup is a complete copy of everything you chose to back up. It takes longer than other backup types and requires more storage space, but is faster to recover in an emergency.

The first backup you make will require full backup, but you can then save time by making incremental or differential backups.

Differential Backup is a copy of the files that have changed since your last full backup. This means that you always have to make backups on the go: full and differential backup. When you need to recover your files, these two backups are intertwined. It is faster than a full backup, and requires less space, but is not as fast as incremental backup.
Incremental backup only backs up files that have changed since your previous backup - whether it was full or not. Incremental backups are the smallest and fastest to perform but take longer to recover than differential or full backups.

How to make and schedule backups

1. Get the software

Download and install the free version of EaseUS Todo Backup. You will need to enter an email address, but you can opt-out of receiving newsletters. During the installation, you may also choose to participate in the EaseUS customer service enhancement program or not.

2. Select your files and destination

You can now click System Backup to back up your entire PC or use the buttons on the left menu to select a specific drive or only certain files. Here, we're going to back up a selection of photos. Use the top window to navigate to the files you want to copy (My Documents, Favorites, and My Desktop are selected by default, but you can deselect them).

Select a backup destination. Ideally, this should be an external drive that you can store in a separate place from your PC, although a separate internal drive will also work. It is best not to store backups in the same source drive.

3. Set a regular schedule

Click 'Schedule' and choose how and when your files should be backed up in the future - it can only be once, or daily, weekly or monthly. Entering your Windows username and password will allow EaseUS Todo Backup to wake your computer from sleep to perform the backup, which is a useful feature and does not interfere with backups that occur when you want to get started.

4. Manage your backups

Click Save to make the first backup and set the future schedule. You can configure multiple backups to happen at different times, for different files. All of these will appear in the main dashboard of the software, which you can use to edit, delete, or restore.

A small pop-up at the bottom left of the screen will notify you when a backup is performed.

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