External Hard Drive (Back-Up Recommendations)

[JLCitadel]

Looking into getting an external hard drive to back up my important files just to be safe.

 

What do you recommend I put on it? Should I bother with windows files? virus software? or just music / photos / videos

 

Size I'll be going with 500gb - 2tb range is plenty, worried about safety and integrity of files from heat / water & viruses

[H4X3R]

Use AOEMI backupper (free) to backup everything. You can then mount the backup as an image file once you have re installed windows and then select which files to copy. The fact that it is a special kind of mounted iso image (basically means you need aomei to open it) means that viruses are less likely to do any harm unless you unpack the iso.

Back up everything, you never know when you'll need that one thing that you forgot to backup.

[Speedbird]

Looking into getting an external hard drive to back up my important files just to be safe.

 

What do you recommend I put on it? Should I bother with windows files? virus software? or just music / photos / videos

 

Size I'll be going with 500gb - 2tb range is plenty, worried about safety and integrity of files from heat / water & viruses

I use a 2TB WD My Passport Ultra. It's small, quiet, USB3 and no external power required.

 

I recommend that you back up what you don't want to lose. I don't really recommend backing up Windows files, because they take a lot of space and you never really need them. When you break your Windows installation for some reason, you can just reinstall and restore your files.

 

And, as for backup software, Windows has pretty good stuff included. On Windows 8 you have File History, which automatically backs up your libraries (that is My Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos and the Desktop). On 7 you have Windows Backup, which recommends you to create a system image (which is your whole C:\ drive), but I recommend just backing up the Libraries.