One of the best and easiest ways to backup your important data is to use an external hard drives. They come in sizes from about 1000GB up to 2TB (terabytes. External hard drives come with three different types of connections, USB FireWire, and eSata. All computers today have USB ports. FireWire and eSata connections are faster, but they are not found on all computers. If you are not sure which connections you may or may not have, you can stick to a USB connection. Or you can check the documentation that came with your computer to see if you have one of the other two connectors on your computer. FireWire ports are becoming more and more commonplace, while eSata ports are still pretty rare.

Some external hard drives come with special backup software which you can use if you like. Or you can simply drag the files from your computer to the hard drive to copy them.

If you want to be sure that you data is safe, you will purchase two external hard drives. Then put a copy of your important data on both and store one off-site from your location.