Backup Computer Files

Backing up computer files gives you the option of just backing up some specific files (manually chosen), to back up all files within a directory (folder) or to back up all files based on file types.

Backing up some specific computer files. This means that you will manually select those files to be backed up, regardless of their location. Depending on the number of files and the size of all of them, sometimes it’s easier to do it manually by copying and pasting the selected files to a backup device, such as an external hard drive or some removable media. This works perfectly if it’s just a handful of files and you won’t be modifying them too often. If the number of files is larger or if they are constantly modified, then you would benefit from using some sort of incremental backup, which can’t be achieved manually but that there are tons of software (free and commercial) that will assist you. An incremental backup will keep a backup copy of the selected files plus a copy of every modification done to them, so you can restore them not only to their original state (the way they were at the time of the first backup) but also to previous versions (like how the file was 2 weeks ago).

If you’re going to back up an entire folder (maybe the documents folder) you can follow the same steps taken to back up specific files, since the same rules apply.

However, if you want to automatically backup all files that match some file types (for an instance, let’s say that you want to back up all your music which is in MP3 format and your personal videos which are in MP4 or WMV format) then it’s always easier and faster to use some back up program that supports file type backups as it will keep scanning your entire hard drive for files matching the selected file types. This way you won’t have to worry as to where you’re saving files, maybe your downloaded files go to one folder and your edited videos are saved on another folder, the backup program will locate them and add them to the backup. Incremental backups are handy when it comes to this kind of backup since even though you may not need to restore a file to a previous version, it’s way faster than making full backup copies every few days just to keep your backup updated.