How Often Should I Backup My Information to an External Hard Drive?

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An external hard drive is an auxiliary storage location that you can add to your computer. Every computer comes with a discrete number of memory storage locations, which make up its hard drive. An external hard drive is another set of storage locations, housed without any other parts of a computer in a separate enclosure, that can be connected to, and exchange information with, a computer through a Universal Serial Bus or Firewire port. The most important use for an external hard drive is security. There are many instances where information on a computer's built-in hard drive can be unexpectedly erased, and people who are often in situations with a high probability of such instances taking place can reduce their risks by using an external hard drive as a backup copy of their computer's hard drive. That way, if their information is suddenly lost, they can download it back to their computer from their external hard drive in a matter of minutes. People in situations where it is more likely for the information on their computer to be lost should back up their information on an external hard drive more often.

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If you use the Internet a lot, especially if you often surf many different web sites, you are at a higher risk of being targeted by malicious programs, such as viruses, spyware, and Trojan horses. These programs will either expose the information stored on the computer's external hard drive to people who are trying to profit off of it, or erase that information entirely. By regularly backing up your information on an external hard drive, you can protect yourself from programs that will try to make you lose it. By only saving private information on an external hard drive, and not the one built in to your computer, you can keep that information from being stolen using similar malicious programming.

If you live in an area where power surges are common, or have a computer that crashes more frequently, you are at a higher risk of losing the information stored on your computer's built-in hard drive. Power surges are bursts of power into a computer, which can cause problems with the energetic configurations of the transistors that make up its hard drive, thereby destroying information stored in the hard drive. When a computer crashes, it can also send pulses of electricity through the hard drive that disrupt its memory in the same way as a power surge. If you are at a higher risk of power surges or computer crashes, you would do better to back up your information on an external hard drive more often.