How to Back Up Songs From a Hard Drive

Hard drives are expected to last from five to ten years, but malfunctions can occur.

As MP3 players gained in popularity, you, along with multitudes of other consumers, likely started buying digital copies of music rather than CDs. As your digital music collection grows, and you invest more and more money into it, you'll need to create regular backups. Computer hard drives don't last forever and when they fail your data will fail along with it. Windows 7 provides all of the tools you'll need to get the job done quickly, you'll just have to provide the storage.

Things You'll Need

• Backup media
• External hard drive

Instructions

1. Click "Start" from your Windows desktop and click "Control Panel." Click "System and Security" and click "Backup and Restore."

2. Insert the media or external device you plan to backup your songs to. You can choose a large flash drive or external hard drive, or you can use a series of DVDs or CDs.

3. Click "Set up backup" to create a new backup plan that targets your music files. Select your backup device from the list provided and click "Next."

4. Click "Let me choose" when asked what you want to back up and click "Next." Expand the hard drive that contains your music file by clicking the small down arrow next to it. Select your "Music" folder or whichever folder you have your music in and click "Next."

5. Click "Change Schedule" and deselect "Run backup on a schedule." This way you can simply trigger the backup on your own time. Click "Save settings and run backup."

Tips & Warnings

• Run your backup regularly to ensure you don't lose anything important if your drive should fail.

References

• Windows: Back Up Your Files