How to Back Up Your PC

It’s critical that you back up your computer regularly. Even the best machines on the market can occasionally crash, causing you to lose data. Usually once the files, documents or other data that you had saved are gone, even your local computer whiz or IT department cannot retrieve them. This leads to hours of doing work all over again and really terrible stress headaches, which nobody wants.

If you are a PC user with Windows on your computer, one easy way to do a full backup of your computer is with Windows Easy Transfer. Microsoft generally makes sure that their customers have it installed, so you probably already have it on your machine, but if not, simply download Windows Easy Transfer here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transfer

Before downloading, be sure to select the 32-bit version unless you know for sure you are using a 64-bit version of Windows.

Now that you have Windows Easy Transfer ready to go, you’re prepared for the next step. Here’s all you need to do in order to get your work, family pictures, and other really important stuff backed up:

1.) Make sure you have some time where you won’t need to use your computer for at least a couple of hours (e.g. end of workday).

2.) Decide where you want to save the data to. Most people like to use an external hard drive that you plug into your computer. You can also use another computer on your network, but that can get a little more complicated.

3.) Open and run Windows Easy Transfer. Select your external drive for your transfer point. This should be the third option.

4.) When prompted to select where to put your Windows Easy Transfer file, you can put it on a network share if you have one, or on your external hard drive. Some people use USB drives (also called flash drives or thumb drives) but this isn’t the best option as they usually have much less space and are considered less stable than an external hard drive. They are also easy to use. But if you are comfortable with this option, go for it!

5) That’s all there is to it! All that you need to do is run Windows Easy Transfer and the software does all the hard work for you. Now your files are backed up and saved in the event of emergency!

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