Hi,

I have a 500 GB hard drive. This is the first time I have used one.
I have backed up personal files, photos, videos, music etc.

I used EaseUS Todo Backup Free to do a system back up. Did I need to do a system backup?
What kind of additional back ups do I need to do and how often? Weekly, monthly, daily, yearly? How do I do additional back ups using EaseUS Free if they are needed?
How much space do backups take? I only want to use this one drive.
I have currently 389 GB of free space on the hard drive.



Vista is my OS if that is helpful.


Thanks for your help.

You should do a system backup anytime you make changes to the system. This includes installing software, software updates and hardware installs.

You should do backup your data regularly. How regularly depends on you.

Here's the rub. If you choose to keep a backup of the entire drive and then keep an incremental backup going every so often (incremental just backs up any changes from last time instead of the whole drive) you need to have the external drive on all the time. USB drives tent to cause my PC's to boot much more slowly than when they're not plugged in at boot. Also having the drive on all the time will cause the life of the drive to be that much lower since they're lives are in estimated hours of use. With that said, I typically make a full back up when I install the OS for the first time before I do anything else (I build my own) then later after I install drivers and basic programs I do another and disconnect the external. Finally after I have my system working and the way I like it months later I make a final third back up and from that point I leave the drive unplugged unless I want to put other stuff on it besides the backups. This way I only use the drive a few times a month or so and it should last a long time. Then after a time say 6 months I will replace the full backup with a new one so I can keep up with MS critical updates that were not backed up before.

Backups are compressed by the utility so don't take up the full space your copying. System backups just backup the system files like critical updates the registry and windows system files. System backups are basically for recovering from virus infection and do not back up your pictures and other data , that's what the full backup is for. I like Acronis for backups, there is a free limited version you can find and often when you buy a drive it will come with some form of Acronis on it but it's worth buying a full copy. It has levels of compression and allows you to mount the images it makes to see what the backup has on it or to copy stuff back that you accidentally deleted.