Exterior Hard Drive for storing files

[jamesk1118]

On my system I've backed up my files on my (K) drive.  I've just recently backed my files again.  (had been a while)

The free space on the drive is getting low.

Should I erase what is on that drive and do a fresh new back up or leave it be.

How do I format this drive if I choose to start fresh again.(I feel this is the best option)

Should I just use a new exterior hard drive.

Any help is appreciated.............  James

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Please tell us what device is the K drive?

What is the capacity of the device?

Is it external or internal?

Is it a partition on a existing hard drive or a partition on an external hard drive?

The best thing to do is to keep your backup(s) on an external hard drive.

[Schrodinger]

Hi Jamesk1118,

May I ask you a few more questions?

How do you backup your files?

Using a software or manually?

How often do you back them up?

What exactly do you backup, all the files on your computer, only documents you've created/received?

Do you have any duplicated files on your (K) drive and, is so, is there any reason for that?

When it comes to backup you have to ask yourself the following question:

What do I want to backup?

How often do I want it to happen?

How do I want it to happen?

Where do I want to back them up?

Answers can be as follow:

Only my files vs the entire hard drive.

Once every two hours/day/month/year.

Automatically vs manually. Full or incremental (only files that were added/changed since the last backup).

Internal disk/partition, external storage device (HDD, tape, off site)

For a personal use, you could decide you want a full backup once a week then an incremental backup once a day onto an external HDD.

This way, you save your data and preserve your external disk space.

Keep in mind that, in this schema, your are able to recover a deleted file for a week (as all backups are done on the same device and based on the "full backup once a week") after that, the file is lost.

But the system is flexible.

You can decide to have a full backup only once a month or once a year.

It all depends on the space you have on your backup media.