Back Up Everything

You already back up important changed files every day to an archive, but a thorough backup plan also includes a bootable duplicate of your entire hard disk, which enables you to recover almost instantly from even a complete drive failure, with all your files intact. You can certainly update this duplicate every day if you wish, but because the process typically takes longer than updating an archive, I suggest updating your duplicate at least once a week.

If you configured your backup software to run on a schedule, your duplicate should update itself automatically every week. If you opted for manual duplicates (or if the drive you use for duplicates isn't always connected), update your duplicate now.

Note

Most backup software, when duplicating your drive onto an external volume, automatically performs an incremental backupcopying only those files that are new or changed since your last duplicate, and deleting files from the external volume that are no longer on your internal disk.