It’s critically important to regularly back up your laptop data to an external hard drive or other storage media. As this article explains, backups protect against data loss from hardware failure, accidental deletion, malware, theft, and other events that could wipe out important files and documents. Without backups, it can be extremely difficult, costly, or impossible to recover lost data.
This guide will provide step-by-step instructions for how to back up an HP laptop to an external hard drive. By following these steps, you’ll be able to set up a regular backup schedule to copy your important files, photos, documents, and other data to a separate drive. This will give you peace of mind knowing you have a recent copy of your critical laptop data stored safely in case disaster strikes.
What You’ll Need:
To backup an HP laptop to an external hard drive, you’ll need the following:
- HP laptop – This can be any model of HP laptop such as an HP Pavilion, HP Spectre, HP Envy, etc.
- External hard drive with enough storage – The external hard drive should have ample storage to hold the backup of everything on your laptop. A 1TB or larger hard drive is recommended. Some popular and reliable external hard drive brands include Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, LaCie, and Samsung (Source).
Before backing up, make sure your external hard drive is formatted to be compatible with your Windows or Mac laptop. Refer to the external hard drive documentation for formatting instructions.
Connecting the External Hard Drive
To connect an external hard drive to your HP laptop, you’ll need a USB cable. Most external hard drives use a standard USB-A to Micro-USB cable. Some newer models may have a USB-C port instead, in which case you’d use a USB-C to USB-C cable. Here are the steps to connect your external drive:
1. Plug the smaller end of the USB cable into the external hard drive.
2. Plug the larger end of the cable into an available USB port on your HP laptop.
Most HP laptops have multiple USB-A ports, often along the sides or back of the laptop. Look for a port with the USB-A symbol, which has a flat rectangular shape. Avoid plugging into ports of other shapes like HDMI or Ethernet.
If your external drive has a USB-C port, plug the USB-C end of the cable into the drive and the USB-C end into a USB-C port on your laptop. HP laptops with USB-C often have these ports along the side or back as well.
Once connected, your HP laptop should automatically detect the external drive. You’ll typically get a popup notification that a new device is ready to use.
Creating a Backup
To create a backup on your HP laptop, first open the Start menu and search for “Backup”. Click on “Backup and Restore” in the search results.
This will open the Backup and Restore wizard. Click on “Set up backup” to begin the process of creating a new backup.
The wizard will guide you through choosing a backup destination and configuring backup settings. It’s recommended to choose your external hard drive as the backup destination.
Make sure the external drive is connected and turned on before starting the backup process. The external hard drive needs to have enough storage space to hold the backup.
Once you’ve selected the backup destination and settings, the wizard will run the initial backup job and create system image files on the external drive. The backup may take a while depending on how much data needs to be backed up.
After the first backup completes, Windows will automatically continue backing up your system periodically based on the schedule you configured.
Choosing Backup Settings
An important part of backing up your HP laptop is choosing the right settings for how often backups occur and where they are stored. It’s recommended to choose the external hard drive as the backup destination. This ensures the backups are stored separately from your laptop’s internal drive, providing redundancy in case the internal drive fails.
You’ll also want to determine the backup frequency – how often backups run. The typical options are daily, weekly, or monthly. According to one expert, most mid-size companies should perform a full backup daily, with incremental backups every 6 hours. For personal use, a weekly full backup is usually sufficient, with daily incremental backups.
When setting the frequency in your backup software, monthly full backups provide a solid archive but are infrequent. Daily full backups are thorough but use more storage space over time. A weekly full backup with daily incrementals is a good balance for most home users.
Selecting What to Backup
When choosing what to backup on your HP laptop, you’ll need to decide between doing a full system image backup or a file backup. A system image backup makes an exact copy of your entire hard drive, including the operating system, settings, programs, and files. This allows you to restore your entire system if needed. A file backup just copies specific folders and files, like documents, photos, music, videos, downloads, desktop files, etc. This takes up less space but doesn’t backup programs and system settings.
For regular backups to an external hard drive, a file backup is usually sufficient. Focus on backing up your personal files that can’t be replaced, rather than program and system files. Some folders to select for backup include:
- Documents folder
- Pictures folder
- Music folder
- Videos folder
- Downloads folder
- Desktop files
You may also want to backup other folders like Favorites/Bookmarks, Contacts, Calendars, Emails, and any other personal data. The specific folders will depend on the apps and programs you use. Refer to your HP laptop’s user manual for guidance on locating personal data folders.
It’s also a good idea to periodically do a full system image backup for protection against disk failures or other system issues. But for regular backups, file backups are simpler, faster, and take up less drive space.
Running the Backup
Once you have set up your backup settings and selected what to backup, you are ready to perform the initial backup to your external hard drive. To start the backup process:
- Open the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) utility.
- Click on “Back up now” in the left pane.
This will start the backup process. A progress bar will appear showing the status of the backup. How long your initial backup takes depends on factors like:
- The amount of data being backed up – larger backups with more files and folders will take longer than smaller ones [1]
- The performance capabilities of your laptop and external hard drive
- Whether you are backing up over USB 2.0, USB 3.0, etc.
For example, backing up 100GB could take over an hour on an older system. Newer laptops with USB 3.0 and quality external drives can backup faster. Monitor the progress and allow the backup to complete.
Verifying the Backup
Verifying your backups is a crucial step to ensure your data is properly backed up and can be restored when needed. After completing the initial backup to your external hard drive, it’s important to confirm the backup files and folders are present on the drive. To do this, simply connect the external hard drive to your computer, open File Explorer, and navigate to the drive. You should see a folder structure containing your backup. Double check that it contains the data you expect.
You’ll also want to test restoring files from the backup to make sure the backup is valid and complete. To do this, copy a file from your backup over to your computer or a different location. Open the copied file and verify it displays properly and contains the expected data. This confirms your backup can be successfully restored when required. For added confidence, try restoring multiple file types such as documents, photos, videos and music.[1]
Performing these simple checks helps validate your backup completed properly. You’ll then have peace of mind knowing your important files are securely saved to the external drive. It’s recommended to occasionally redo the verification to ensure your backups remain valid over time.
Automating Backups
One of the best ways to ensure your backups happen regularly is to automate the process. HP includes backup software with Windows 10 called HP Backup and Recovery Manager that allows you to set a schedule for automatic backups.
To set up scheduled backups in HP Backup and Recovery Manager, open the software and click “Backup Settings.” Under “Backup Scheduling,” choose how often you want backups to occur (e.g. daily, weekly) and at what time. You can select multiple days if you want a backup to happen more than once a week.
Some key things to consider when scheduling automated backups:
- Set the backup frequency based on how often your laptop data changes. For many, daily or weekly is sufficient.
- Pick a time when you know your laptop will be powered on but not in active use, like late at night.
- Keep backups frequent enough that you won’t lose more than 1 day’s worth of changes if something goes wrong.
While HP Backup and Recovery Manager is convenient, third-party backup software like Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office offers more robust options for automated backups. This includes setting multiple schedules, linking backups to events like system startup/shutdown, and more flexibility for the backup source and destination.
Backup Best Practices
Following best practices for backup can help ensure your data is properly protected in case of hardware failure, theft, or disaster. Here are some key tips:
Store the external hard drive in a different physical location than your laptop. This prevents a localized disaster like fire or flood from destroying both the original data and the backup. For optimal protection, consider keeping the drive in a secure offsite location like a bank safe deposit box.
Occasionally test restoring from your backup to ensure the process works properly when needed. Restoring a few files periodically can uncover any issues with backup integrity, encryption, or drive errors before a real disaster occurs.
Encrypt sensitive files within the backup image to prevent unauthorized access. Built-in Windows tools like BitLocker can encrypt entire drives, or third party software allows encrypting only select files and folders.
Following a 3-2-1 backup strategy – with 3 copies of data, 2 local and 1 offsite, provides redundancy against hardware failure, theft, or natural disaster. Storing backups both locally and offsite ensures you can restore data even if one copy is compromised.
