Reading a recent thread about backing up your computer files got me worried. All of my family photo's and business records for the last eight years are on my system. To back them up I have considered an external hard drive, I also note that my Norton security system now have a back up facility, is that any good?. I am not really into computers so I never seem to get around to doing any thing about it and I realise that one day I am really going to regret it. Therefore what should I do?

I used the Norton backup because it was part of the package, but I didn't like the look or the feel of it, but having had to use it in anger last year when my hard drive failed, I can say I was impressed. I recovered almost everything.
As long as you have a separate drive(s) to store your your backups on what have you got to lose?

I would recommend a Clickfree Backup external drive. It comes with the backup software already loaded. Just plug into your USB and you are away. I got a 1TB unit and I back up all the PC's in my house. Even reminds you when you need to back up - priceless!!

Another vote for an external drive. Without one Norton would be backing up on to the same drive (if it fails you lose everything) or on to the web which is crap if you have lots of stuff

I'd suggest backing stuff up to more than one place.

I tend to use IDrive for documents and photos (that is, stuff that's irreplaceable), along with a USB thumb drive with all the same stuff on it, just for a bit of redundancy.

For stuff I'd rather not lose, but isn't important in the grand scheme of things, like movies and music, I tend to use an external HDD, but being picky about what I save.

Also, it's worth remembering flash drives are a lot more resilient to physical shock than standard HDDs (at the cost of price and storage space)

as an alternative and if you have several computers at home. look at a NAS (external) hard drive, this is a stand alone drive, leave it connect to your router and all the computers in the house can access it without needing to move it and plug it in. i have one at home and its great

Any backup that requires you to do something is a poor solution. It has to be completely automated otherwise it won't get done in the long run.

For long term backup and archiving of photos Google Picasa has a built in backup facility which will backup to CD or DVD rw.
Picasa is free and is a lot easier to use than most software supplied with digital cameras.


Also SD memory cards are available in sizes big enough to hold very large numbers of jpegs.