Back up your PC and protect your data with these Windows resources

By Cale Hunt
last updated

Don't be an April fool! Back up your data — and then back it up again.

Celebrate World Backup Day (and protect your data) with these Windows resources

Hard Drives

In an effort to save innocent data everywhere, an initiative known as World Backup Day was started. The mission is simple: raise awareness of data loss, and have people worldwide back up their files and folders on March 31.

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Data loss, when experienced first-hand, can be frustrating, devastating or even heartbreaking, depending on what you lost. Those vacation photos? Forgotten. Your novel five years in the making? Better start writing that prologue again. Important files from work? Start planning how you'll break it to the boss.

To avoid painful scenarios, all you have to do is back up your data. Yes, it's one more thing to do in an already busy day, but it's an invaluable step that can save you time in the future.

Windows Central takes data loss and backup procedures very seriously, and we created quite a few guides on creating proper backups in a wide range of scenarios.

General backup information

SSD (Image credit: Windows Central)

Hard drive imaging and cloning

Using a NAS for backups

NAS (Image credit: Windows Central)

Using cloud services

Are you celebrating World Backup Day?

Have you been looking forward to World Backup Day to finally take the steps needed to safeguard your data, or are you already on top of things? (Did you even know there was a World Backup Day before you read this post?) Be sure to let us know in the comments.

Cale Hunt
Cale Hunt
Senior Editor, Laptop Reviews

Cale Hunt is formerly a Senior Editor at Windows Central. He focuses mainly on laptop reviews, news, and accessory coverage. He's been reviewing laptops and accessories full-time since 2016, with hundreds of reviews published for Windows Central. He is an avid PC gamer and multi-platform user, and spends most of his time either tinkering with or writing about tech.

11 Comments
  • I saw this article too late. When a police officer pulled me over I learned World Backup Day did not mean driving in reverse everywhere.
  • Dad? Is that you?
  • Good backup practices should be implemented EVERY day, you can never be too safe with your data and personal files
  • Definitely. I would love to hear from other WC readers what you are using for System Image backups, or if you don't take those why you don't think they are worth doing etc.
  • What is everybody using for System Image backup? I'm struggling to find software that is affordable for multiple home systems. The Windows Image Backup is okay but not ideal and on my wife's Macbook it won't work for some reason and was never able to get to the bottom of it
  • Personally I use Macrium Reflect free version to make regular (Wednesdays and Sundays) image backups of my system drive. Personal files are on a separate partition which gets backed up twice weekly to two different external disks.
  • EaseUS Todo Backup Free 10.0
  • For Windows 10 I use AOMEI software to back up to NAS periodically. It detects system changes and only needs to back up what's needed after the initial backup. For my Mac Mini I use Time Machine to back up to NAS. Although I've found TM to be flakey of late in actually performing backups. Mac gets used less than Windows in my household anyways.
  • Thanks I'll check it out - I assume you are using AOMEI Backupper pro? The $49.95 price includes 2 PC's which is pretty reasonable. Works fine with W10 and is it fairly slick and easy to use?
  • Using just the standard free version. I may buy Pro eventually. I only worry about a single Windows machine for backup and tend to swap SSDs more often in it. Works fine and is easy to use. Download the free version to try for yourself.
  • Yay for backups!! :)