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Step 1
First thing you will have to decide is what type of storage device and connection type you want/need. The first type is a USB type connection. USB plugs directly into a computer and installs via a set of built in drivers. The device will show as a second hard drive in your computers "my computer" dialogue box. This is a simple and easy do it yourself type of backup device. You can get this in various sizes up to an exceeding 1 terra byte (1,000 gigabyte). Once the device is installed you will run the included software to setup the automated backup software. The software will send the files to be backed up to the next drive. This device will usually only backup the computer it is attached to.
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Step 2
The second type of drive is what's called a "Network attached storage" or "NAS" unit. This attaches via an ethernet cable and allows "ALL" computers attached to your network to share the device. Setting up is easy, connect the supplied ethernet cable to your broadband router, and install the included setup CD on a computer within your network. The software will allow you access to the device to configure it. This will look as a shared network drive, to share and save files to this device. The advantage of this is you can save your music library to it and allow all computers to share the same library. Save precious pictures to it so everyone can see it.
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Step 3
Now all of these devices have a single hard drive, which can be dangerous if in fact you keep a single copy of your data on it, the chances of a hard drive failure are pretty high. However, we have a solution, these NAS units all come in a "RAID" configuration. Raid is an acronym for "Redundant array of inexpensive disks", and allows multiple disks to share in the duty of storing data. If you purchase a "Mirrored" raid unit this includes 2 hard drives which mirror' s all data on both. If one fails you still have the second drive.
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Step 4
It is definitely worth your while to store duplicates of ALL data since these drives do fail regularly.
