You will need to purchase an external hard drive to back up your data to. ResNet recommends the Western Digital brand of external hard disks, and they are available for purchase at the Shaheen Bookstore (and may be charged to your student account), Amazon.com, and Best Buy.

    1. Connect your external hard drive to your computer.

    2. Click Start, and then select Control Panel.

    3. In the upper right corner of the Control Panel window, next to View by:, select Small icons.

    4. Click on Backup and Restore.

    5. Click on Set up backup.

    6. In the Select where you want to save your backup window select your external hard drive.

    7. In the What do you want to back up? window select Let Windows choose (recommended). This option will include all user folders (including My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures), local files, and libraries. A system image (a copy of your Windows drive) may also be backed up, depending on your external hard drive's space and formatting (NTFS is required).

    8. Click Change schedule to set how often and when you wish to schedule your backups. The default is every Sunday at 7:00pm, but you should select a time that is more convenient for you (when you know you will have the computer on and connected to the external hard drive). For most people, weekly backups are sufficient.

    9. Make sure that Run backup on a schedule (recommended) is checked. Click OK.

    10. Click Save settings and run backup.

    11. To review your backups (when your last backup was completed, how much space is remaining on your external hard drive, schedule of your backups), return to the Backup and Restore Center (Start -> Control Panel -> Backup and Restore).

    12. Don't forget to keep your computer turned on for the scheduled backups!


Last Modified January 18, 2010