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You've heard every mantra and cautionary tale a dozen times, but if you still haven't backed up that hard drive by now, the lessons haven't sunk in. It may not seem like a big deal if everything's humming along, but losing files or precious photos to malware, food spills, fire, or any other corrosive indignity brings on those twin sensations of panic and despair. This article takes you through some simple hardware and software solutions to save those files, then weighs the pros and cons of each approach.

Back up to an external hard drive

External hard drives and network-attached storage are local ways to back up your files to a physical drive that lives outside your PC. Since network-attached storage devices are typically for the home networker with multiple computers to safeguard from data loss, most people looking for a basic backup option will lean toward external hard drives, like some of these CNET favorites.

The Clickfree Portable Backup Drive automatically begins backing up your drive for you.

(Credit: CNET)

After purchasing an external drive, you'll just plug it into your computer to get started. Most conventional drives like the ultraportable 320GB Seagate FreeAgent Go will trigger your computer to open a separate drive folder, like "Removable Drive F:". Copying or dragging the files you'd like to save from their original folder into the external drive folder transfers them over.

The purpose-built 320GB Clickfree Portable Backup Drive provides an even simpler backup method. After plugging it in, the drive's native software automatically finds and backs up all of your computer's data. Not bad for about $200. If that's not enough storage space for you, there's also the four-bay Drobo for serious data nuts. It's not without its shortcomings, including its high price. For backups, it's best used for creating redundancy in case one of your other drives fail.

Desktop backup software

One of the primary advantages of using software to copy your files is being able to schedule backups of your data, although all programs will let you manually back up data as well. While most people will find online storage solutions the easiest to maintain, desktop backup software has its merits.

For example, for $50, the Acronis True Image Home 2009 images your hard drive, including your programs, documents, music, photos, and Outlook e-mail. In the event of a crash, you can boot it from the PC or from a CD.

(Credit: CNET)

Everyone knows they should back up their data, but a surprisingly small percentage of people actually do. Unfortunately, when the big crash finally comes or you experience a hard-drive failure, that's usually the time you realize you should have been backing up all along. There are a number of programs that make it easier to regularly back up your hard drive, but in my experience, many require several steps to get the job done.

Nero's BackItUp and Burn ($39.99), released yesterday, attempts to make the whole process easier for everyone. Using an intuitive tabbed interface and simple controls, just about anyone can pick up BackItUp and Burn and start a regular schedule for backups or folder syncing in only a few clicks. The software even offers the option of sending you an e-mail notification when automated backups are complete.

It's incredibly easy to set up a backup schedule so you never have to worry about your data again

(Credit: CNET)

BackItUp and Burn also includes full burning capabilities (as the name suggests), letting you burn your music, videos, data, and pictures to CD, DVD, or Blue-ray Discs so you have a hard copy of your most important personal files. Nero offers a free Gigabyte of online storage for a three-month trial, but you'll need to buy a subscription (there are three tiers to choose from) if you want to store more data in the cloud. You can pay as little as $7.49 for 5GB of storage for three months, or as much as $59.99 for 25GB of storage for a year. You should be aware that this program requires the latest Microsoft .NET Framework in order to run (you will be prompted to download during install). You also will have the choice of installing the Ask Toolbar during install.

Nobody wants to lose all his or her data, but too few of us actually take the steps necessary to create regular backups. Nero's BackItUp and Burn provides novice and advanced users a way to keep music, photos, and data safe without a lot of hassle and at a fairly affordable price.

If you're an iTunes user (download for Windows|Mac) whose appetite for music, movies, and podcasts is outstripping the capacity of your computer, it might be a good time to think about offloading that library to an external hard drive or a separate internal drive. If you do it right, the process is relatively simple, although the transfer time could take an hour or more, depending on the size of your media library.

To walk you through it, here's a step-by-step video and slide show tutorial on how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive.

Move your iTunes library to an external hard drive

(Credit: CNET)

Just about everyone who works with a computer knows they should perform regular backups, but only a very small percentage actually do. While people's intentions are good, most simply think backing up their computer is too much trouble or software is too complex to figure out. Unfortunately, when the big crash finally does occur or a laptop is stolen, for example, the resulting loss of important data has us pulling our hair out wondering why we didn't take the plunge on backup software.

Today, a front-runner in backup software on Windows machines released a strong backup solution for Mac. Backblaze takes the guesswork out of backing up your data with an easy to understand interface, simple scheduling tools, and a brand-new external drives backup interface. To keep your data safe, use the Backblaze preference pane to securely back up your data online so when the unthinkable happens, you can resync your data from the last backup. Backblaze lets you restore from the Web or you can get a DVD or USB drive sent through FedEx.

The initial backup can take some time, but you can pause the process if you need to.

(Credit: CNET)

On launch, Backblaze gets to work analyzing your drive for irreplaceable documents immediately, automatically scanning for important files like photos, music files, and other important documents. The files are automatically encrypted on your hard drive, compressed, and then sent to the Backblaze servers in their encrypted state. The initial backup can take up to a few days depending on your Internet connection, but once it's finished, Backblaze backs up files continuously as you work, making sure you won't lose the latest file revisions or recently added music and photos.

While you shouldn't notice a significant change in your Mac's performance during backups, you have the option of scheduling a time each day to perform the backup. Those who want full control over their backup schedule can simply hit a button to Backup Now whenever it's convenient.

The demo gives you a 15-day trial to find out if Backblaze is right for you, and a $5/month subscription fee is all you'll need to get regular backups with unlimited storage. Also, Backblaze is offering the first 25 people who install today a free 1-year license. Clearly, they will go quickly, so grab your copy as soon as possible.

One of the best new tools that Windows Vista came out with was a built-in partition manager. Last fall, one company began offering a freeware remedy for Windows XP users. Easeus Partition Manager brings a robust and diverse set of drive management tools to users of both operating systems, and is poised to compete with Partition Magic and other pay-for-play programs' most basic features.

Easeus Partition Manager offers a robust toolset for partition management.

(Credit: Easeus)

Unlike the excellent, but CD-based, Gparted, Easeus Partition Manager can run from your current XP or Vista 32-bit installation. EPM's basic features handle the biggest and most important partitioning tasks. You can resize, create, format, and delete partitions, and most functions can be completed without requiring a reboot. Resizing can be done visually, by adjusting the slider bar, or by entering in a precise size in the text field below. You can also drag the slider to achieve an approximate size, and then adjust the field manually to your specification. This may sound unintuitive, but it actually works quite well.

Once you've resized your drive, you can create a partition and a second drive in the newly-freed space. Hit the Create button to label the partition and choose a drive letter for it. While running, EPM will keep you informed of the progress of the overall task, as well as the multiple steps it takes in partitioning your drive. A helpful color key lives in the status bar at the bottom, divvying up drives by type as well as allocation use.

Easeus Partition Manager's simplistic interface belies what it can do.

(Credit: Easeus)

The Set Active Partition feature allows you to set which partition your computer will boot from on default. Check Partition runs Windows' diagnostic tools scandisk and chkdisk.

Other major features for this RAID-compatible software include the ability to hide a partition for enhanced security, and copying a partition--useful for backing up your data. Copy will default to file copying, but will switch to a sector copy protocol if errors are encountered. When you copy, you can even have it automatically resize the partition to fit the target space. EPM can handle drives between 2 GB and 1.5 TB, and up to 32 distinct drives, making it scalable for complex home networks. Compatible drives include USB thumbdrives, SATA, IDE, Firewire, and SCSI.

In testing these features, the only glitch--and really, it was the only problem--I encountered occurred when a task had completed and the program window hid behind other active program windows. This did not, however, affect the use or execution of EPM.

As you can tell from the screenshots, EPM is not a pretty bird. Being ugly, however, doesn't mean that the interface is poorly designed. Big toolbar buttons, context menus, and left-nav listings make EPM easy to navigate and use. The clean layout makes up for the lack of polish, but longtime freeware users probably won't even notice the lack of glitter. Vista users with 64-bit systems and those who want EPM for businesses must purchase a license, but otherwise this is one of the best partitioning programs around, freeware or otherwise.

If you're already starting to eye those pre-Black Friday deals on hard drives and you're running Windows Vista, you might want to step away from that credit card for just a moment. CNET TV Editor Brian Tong has some excellent hints on how to clear out clutter from your hard drive.

In the video, he recommends TreeSize for quickly analyzing the contents of your drive and subfolders. It's a good program, but if you're looking for something with a bit more heft, I'd suggest WinDirStat.

Hopefully, there aren't too many Windows users left who don't have Auslogics Disk Defrag. In case you don't, though, this is an excellent time to stop using the slow, native Microsoft defragger and upgrade--for free!--to an app that works better and faster: Auslogics Disk Defrag.

Even on older Windows XP systems, the program runs reasonably fast. Chose a hard drive from the drop-down menu to get a read on its stats such as free and used space and get a visual comparison in a pie chart. One click starts the defragging, and along with a visual table representing the various bits and bytes that are being shunted around, you also get a running ticker of the file currently being defragged. Disk Defragger spits out a bar graph and an HTML report at the end, lacking only a final sector map.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

When I bought a gaming PC for home use a little over a year ago, I bought a middle-of-the-road machine that had everything I needed with a little room to upgrade later on down the line. I got a 2.2GHz processor, a high-end (at the time) video card so I could play the latest games, 2 gigs of RAM (on the advice of a gamer friend), and I opted for a 120GB hard drive to save a little money.

At the time, it seemed like 120GB would be more than enough. After all, I can remember when a 1GB hard drive was the pinnacle of storage capacity--120GB ought to be able to hold anything right? Games these days generally take up a few gigs each so I thought I would never run out of space. I now know I was wrong. If you wait long enough, even the biggest hard drives will fill up.... Read more

WinDirStat provides easy visual reference for your disk-space usage.

(Credit: WinDirStat)

Over the weekend, I found myself on a digital precipice. My laptop's hard drive had maxed out its 90GB, there were less than 5 to go. My external hard drive, The Tank, was about to get tanked: Out of the 250GB it could hold, I was down to less than 4. I still needed to upload a bunch of RAW format photos, with each image closing in on 10MB. What to do?

I remembered a recent article we ran about good system utilities and identifying where your precious gigabytes are going. Sure enough, WinDirStat came up. I was hoping that there was some unknown cache taking up all my space, or at least enough to be able to save without fear of outrunning the hard drive's limits.

... Read more