How to Back Up Your Data on an External Hard Drive

Spring is the perfect time to clear out the clutter from the past year and refresh your home. They don't call it "Spring cleaning" for nothing! But certain techy tasks may be forgotten as you're tossing out the old, so throughout March, we'll be bringing you daily reminders of tasks, cleaning tips, and even a few DIYs to make your geeky life shine. First up and probably the most important for anyone who stores important files and information on their computers (and who doesn't?): back up your data!

If you haven't already, get an external hard drive to hold all of your important data; there are plenty of 'em out there to choose from, and they get more and more affordable every year. If you don't have a ton of music, movies, and photo files, 120GB should be plenty to keep you safe, but if you want your entire media-heavy digital life backed up in one place, consider purchasing 1TB of storage or more. If you have smaller, more important documents to save (like insurance documents, copies of your passport, proof of purchase for your car), you can back those up to a flash drive that you keep in a safe place as well, or back it all up online for minimal cost. There's even a website called MiMedia that lets you back up your photos and home videos and view them from anywhere, so you don't need to store your entire collection on your laptop, also freeing up space.

Once you have everything copied over into your external hard drive and/or flash drive, keep them in an airtight fireproof safe to ensure it stays dry during storms, floods, fires, and other natural disasters.

Check back every day this month for more tech-savvy Spring cleaning tips!