six ways to back up your computer

01 Time Machine

If you have a Mac, it’s easy – Time Machine is baked into macOS. You’ll need an external hard drive or Time Capsule to do it. Open Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine and you’ll be guided through the steps.

02 Windows Backup

There’s a similar feature in Windows, too. Select Start > Settings > Update & security > Backup > Add a drive, and then choose an external drive or network location for your backup. You might want to do this and take it elsewhere for extra security (rather than storing it at home).

03 Us e Livedrive

Livedrive is a cloud-based subscription service starting from £5 per month for a PC. But if you pay more, it’ll backup all your computers. It makes a complete copy of all the files on your PC – you tell it what to back up.

04 Free backup software

There are numerous free Windows backup apps available, like Easeus Todo Backup Free (bit.ly/t3easeus). These software packages enable you to have more control over your backups than Windows Backup.

05 Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive

If you have a preferred cloud storage service, you can use it to back up some of your files, though this can get expensive depending on the amount of storage you need. Backup is also limited to what’s in the relevant folder on your PC.

06 Network st orage

A network-attached storage (NAS) drive like the WD MyCloud (wdc.com/en-gb) usually comes with backup software and can create a backup of your files across your home network, so you don’t need to be directly plugged in to back up.