If you don’t back up your computer files, you could lose them with a simple virus. It is so easy for a computer’s integrity to be compromised, no matter how protected it may seem. If you want to avoid losing the most important information on your PC, you need to find some way to copy and store it. Here are four creative ways to back up computer files.
Email Yourself
Your email account can be used for more than sending pictures of Uncle Buddy on the couch. You could send yourself emails with important files in them, and then all you would have to do is go back through your emails to find them. If you wanted to organize the files, you could create folders in your email account to store them. Make a file for homework, scholarship applications, financial statements, receipts, or anything else you need. Just make sure you title the messages well so they are easy to search for later on.
Carbon Copy Everything
There are several websites online that will carbon copy your files at all times. These sites instantly back up your computer throughout the day, so you never have to worry about losing your information. You have to be careful with this though because some sites will use access to your computer to insert viruses into the system. Make sure you work with a reputable site if you are going to use a service like this.
Download Dropbox
You can get a free Dropbox to use on your computer, and that will automatically sync the files inside to the internet. Rather than getting something that will copy all of your computer files, you could use this to copy the most important ones. The free version of the service only offers 2 GB of storage, but you could upgrade to a premium account if that wasn’t enough. It just depends on how many files you were trying to store.
Buy an External Hard Drive
If all else fails, you can use an external hard drive to back up computer files. Doing this would allow you to basically create a copy of your files in a massive flash drive, and all you have to do after that is protect the hard drive itself. You will obviously lose the files if you lose the external, but that shouldn’t happen easily. External hard drives have significantly come down in price over the years, so you should be able to get something you can work with without having to spend a ton of money along the way.
No matter how seldom or often you use the computer, you need to have a secondary copy of your important files. Use the ideas above to back up your computer files in the future, and you won’t have to worry about losing them unexpectedly.
About the Author: Roger Porter is a computer science major pursuing his master’s degree on a minority scholarship. He uses his computer for school and work every single day, just like most of the modern world.
