While File History works quite well in my testing, and can take the place of something like Time Machine if you go through and set it up for every folder you need to back up, Windows still doesn’t really have a utility like Time Machine. A WIRED reader tipped me off to the File History features in Windows, which performs automatic incremental backups on any folder you designate. Windows 11 offers Windows backup, which will back up most of your personal data to your Microsoft account, but it isn’t intended to fully restore your system, should a hard drive fail. Time Machine is smart too it will only back up files that have changed, so it won’t eat up all your disk space. Apple has good instructions on how to set up Time Machine so it will make daily backups to your external hard drive.
It’s a wonderfully simple piece of software and possibly the best reason to buy a Mac. These days there is software that can automate all of your backup tasks. If you have to make a backup, you probably won’t. If you don’t mind a larger form factor, there’s a Western Digital 8-terabyte “desktop” version that’s not much more ( $155 at Amazon).Ī good backup system runs without you needing to do a thing. I like this 5-terabyte model ( $110 at Amazon, $108 at Best Buy), which will back up this very article later tonight (it’s backed up to the cloud as I type, more on that in a minute). Several of us here on the Gear team have had good luck with Western Digital hard drives. In my case, the company replaced the drive without question.Įven within brand names, though, some drives are better than others. What you get by sticking with the brand names is good customer service. I had a big brand-name drive fail on me recently, and it was only four months old. That said, I suggest sticking with known names like Seagate, Western Digital, and Hitachi. Unfortunately, what really jumps out of that data is that longevity varies more by model than by manufacturer. Backblaze, a backup company that currently stores more than 1 exabyte of data, and therefore has considerable experience with hard drives, periodically publishes its drive statistics, which have some helpful numbers to consider. If you want something small, see our guide to portable hard drives (which don’t require external power). The hardest thing about this step is figuring out which hard drive to buy.
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