When you plug in your drive, your Mac will ask you if you want to use that drive as a backup disk. Hit 'Use as Backup Disk'. If you don't get this prompt, you can always go to System Preferences. Get to Know Reasons for Backing Up External Hard Drive. Thanks to the large storage space.
Why Do You Need to Back Up Your Windows 7 Computer
By backing up your Windows 7 computer to an external hard drive, you can:
- Avoid complete data loss
Data loss occurs on a daily basis on computers due to misoperations or unexpected errors. Since we cannot completely prevent it from happening, the optimal choice to avoid losing important data is to back up computer elsewhere. By backing up Windows 7 and files on the computer to an external hard drive, you can protect your operating system and data against situations that may cause data loss like system crash, hard disk failure, and virus attacks.
- Free up hard drive space
It's common that there are too many files occupying your disk space and making your Windows 7 computer run slow. To boost your computer's performance without losing data, you will need to make a backup in advance before you delete the files from your computer to free up disk space and speed up Windows.
The Tool You Need - Windows 7 Backup Software
It's no doubt that you can back up files and settings on your Windows 7 computer to an external hard drive by manually copying the items or using the inbuilt Backup and Restore feature. However, the former method won't compress the files, which means they will take up much space on your external hard drive, and the latter only enables you to back up the whole drive instead of the folders or files on it. That's why you need the flexible Windows backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup to freely back up the files on your Windows 7 computer.
This software maximizes your freedom to back up your Windows 7 computer. Whether you want to solely back up the Windows 7 OS, some files/folders, partition, or disks, you can do it with the help of EaseUS Todo Backup. Besides, it's also equipped with an automatic backup feature that enables you to schedule your backup.
- Back up and restore Outlook emails, files, OS, partitions, and disks in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP
- Back up data to a local hard drive, external storage devices, computer under the same LAN, cloud device, and more
- Perform or schedule full, differential, and incremental backups
- Create an emergency disk that helps to rescue your data when the computer fails to boot
EaseUS Todo Backup will back up your Windows 7 OS or the files on your computer to an image file that is much smaller than the original size and you can easily perform recovery as long as you have the backup available. In addition, this software also provides disk cloning features that allow you to migrate OS to SSD, update HDD to a larger HDD or better-performed SSD, and more.
How to Back Up Computer to External Hard Drive in Windows 7
Depending on the content you'd like to back up, you can choose Disk/Partition Backup, System Backup, File Backup, or Email Backup. The following steps show you how to back up Windows 7 to an external hard drive with EaseUS backup and recovery software. If you want to back up some specific files/folders or disks on your computer, choose File Backup or Disk/Partition Backup instead.
- Notice:
- Empty the storage device if you want to back up your Windows 7 to another storage device such as external hard drive or USB.
Step 1. Connect your external storage device to your PC if you want to backup the Windows 7 system to an external hard drive, USB or SD card.
And the external storage device should be equal to or even bigger than your Windows 7 system size.
Step 2. Launch and run EaseUS Todo Backup on your Windows 7 PC, on the home screen choose 'OS'. Or, you can click the icon at the left top corner and then select 'System Backup' on the left tool panel.
Step 3. Choose Windows 7 that you want to back up.
And specify a location on your PC, an external storage device or even a network drive as your Windows 7 system backup destination.
Step 4. Click 'Proceed' to start the Windows 7 system backup process now.
If you want to create a backup plan to automatically create Windows 7 system restore points, continue with below tips:
1. Click'Schedule: Off' after clicking System Backup and set the type that you want to backup Windows 7 system by day, week or even month.
2. And 'Save' all changes.
Then continue with 'Step 3' and 'Step 4', after the first full backup of your Windows 7 system, EaseUS Todo Backup will automatically backup your system as you scheduled by then.
EaseUS Todo Backup will offer you a compression option to compress and encrypt your Windows 7 files to the external hard drive so to protect the data security and save more save on the destination drive. Whether you want to back up your Windows 7, the OS, or want to back up files on your Windows 7 computer, you can apply this software to easily get things done.
How to Recover Files from Windows 7 Computer
If you have lost files from your Windows 7 computer and there is no backup available for you to recover these items, you can use the advanced hard drive recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to safely get your data back. It supports the data recovery from local hard drives on your Windows 7 computer or Windows-compatible storage devices. It will help you recover almost any file type after emptying recycle bin, accidental deletion, formatting, OS reinstallation, OS crash, and other tough data loss situations. If you have lost files on your computer running Windows 7, learn how to recover deleted files in Windows 7 computers.
To learn how to back up and restore individual files on a Windows-based computer:
Backup Laptop To External Drive
To learn how to back up and restore in Windows 10:
Back up
There are several ways to back up your PC.
Select the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore.
Do one of the following:
If you've never used Windows Backup before, or recently upgraded your version of Windows, select Set up backup, and then follow the steps in the wizard.
If you've created a backup before, you can wait for your regularly scheduled backup to occur, or you can manually create a new backup by selecting Back up now.
If you've created a backup before, but want to make a new, full backup rather than updating the old one, select Create new, full backup, and then follow the steps in the wizard.
Note: Do not back up files to the same hard disk that Windows is installed on. For example, do not back up files to a recovery partition. Always store media used for backups (external hard disks, DVDs, or CDs) in a secure place to prevent unauthorized people from having access to your files; a fireproof location separate from your computer is recommended. You might also consider encrypting the data on your backup.
Create a system image
System images contain all of the info on your PC at a particular state.
Right-click the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore.
In the left pane, choose Create a system image, and then follow the steps in the wizard. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Note: To create a system image of a drive, it must be formatted to use the NTFS file system. If you save the system image on a hard drive or USB flash drive, it must be formatted to use the NTFS file system.
How Do I Backup Computer To External Hard Drives
Keeping different versions of system images
You can keep several versions of system images. On internal and external hard drives, older system images will be deleted when the drive runs out of space. To help conserve disk space, delete older system images.
If you're saving your system images in a network location, you can only keep the most current system image for each computer. System images are saved in the format of driveWindowsImageBackupcomputer name. If you already have a system image for a computer and are creating a new one for the same computer, the new system image will overwrite the old one.
If you want to keep the old system image, you can copy it to a different location before creating the new system image by following these steps.
Navigate to the location of the system image.
Copy the WindowsImageBackup folder to a new location.
Create a restore point
You can use a restore point to restore your computer's system files to an earlier point in time. Restore points are automatically created each week by System Restore and when your PC detects change, like when you install an app or driver.
Here's how to create a restore point.
Right-click the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance > System.
In the left pane, select System protection.
Select the System Protection tab, and then select Create.
In the System Protection dialog box, type a description, and then select Create.
Restore
Right-click the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore.
Do one of the following:
To restore your files, choose Restore my files.
To restore the files of all users, choose Restore all users' files.
Do one of the following:
To look through the contents of the backup, select Browse for files or Browse for folders. When you're browsing for folders, you won't be able to see the individual files in a folder. To view individual files, use the Browse for files option.
To search the contents of the backup, select Search, type all or part of a file name, and then select Search.
Tip: If you're searching for files or folders associated with a specific user account, you can improve search results by typing the location of the file or folder in the Search for box. For example, to search for all JPG files that were backed up, type JPG in the Search for box. To only search for JPG files associated with the user Bill, type C:UsersBillJPG in the Search for box. Use wildcard characters such as *.jpg to search for all JPG files that were backed up.
Restore a backup made on another computer
You can restore files from a backup that was created on another computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7.
Select the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Backup and Restore.
Choose Select another backup to restore files from, and then follow the steps in the wizard. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Find files that were restored from a backup made on another computer
If you're restoring files from a backup that was made on another computer, the files will be restored in a folder under the user name that was used to create the backup. If the user names are different, you'll need to navigate to the folder where the files are restored. For example, if your user name was Molly on the computer that the backup was made on but your user name is MollyC on the computer that the backup is being restored on, the restored files will be saved in a folder labelled Molly.
To find restored files:
Select the Start button, then select Computer.
Double-click the icon of the drive that the files are saved on, for example C:. How to read a memory stick.
Double-click the Users folder. You will see a folder for each user account.
Double-click the folder for the user name that was used to create the backup. The restored files will be in the various folders based on where they were located originally.
Restore files from a file backup after restoring your computer from a system image backup
After you restore your computer from a system image backup, there may be newer versions of some of your files in a file backup that you want to restore.
To restore files from a file backup that was created after the system image backup was created, follow these steps.
Select the Start button, then select Control Panel > System and Maintenance >Backup and Restore.
Choose Select another backup to restore files from. How to get videos off your phone onto the computer. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
In Backup Period, select the date range of the backup that contains the files that you want to restore, and then follow the steps in the wizard.