- 1). Purchase an external flash drive to use as storage for the data when you back up your home computer. Make sure you purchase a drive with twice the capacity needed to hold your current data. This will allow for additional files that you may add over time.
- 2). Determine whether your computer has a built-in backup facility. Computers with Windows XP Professional or Vista have a built-in program to back up your home computer data onto the external drive, and it can be installed with the Windows XP Home Edition installation CD. PC and laptop manufacturers may also include a program, which will show up as an icon on your desktop.
- 3). Decide whether you want to use the pre-existing backup program, if any, or whether you prefer to use another program. You can purchase a variety of backup utilities or download one of the many free programs that are available online. You will find a link to popular free programs in Resources below.
- 4). Make a plan to do regular backups at least once per week. If your software program has the capacity, set it up to perform an automatic backup of your home computer at a specified time each day. If it does not have this ability, perform backups on a regular basis. Daily is ideal, but you should perform a backup at least weekly.
- 5). Consider other options besides physical backup storage. In addition to flash drives and other physical storage media, you can sign up for an online backup service. For a monthly or yearly fee, you will be able to back up your home computer data to a remote site. Some people use this in conjunction with keeping hard copies of their files, while others depend solely on online backups.
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