Back up to external hard drive

[Chief95]

Don't laugh, its such a simple question.

I have been using a commercial company to back up my computer for the last 2 years. Now I have decided to do my own backups.

I already did the first back up to the external drive. Now its time to back up again,

my question is when I back up again, will everything be backed up again?

Or just the files that have changed?

Thank you fro your help.

Chief95

 

[ignatzatsonic]

More details needed, such as the program you are now using, what files or partition you are backing up, etc.

But generally:

If you are referring to an image method of backup, you can typically choose to do a full backup of all files on the partition or just the "incremental" files that are new or modified since the last backup. Most would tell you that "incremental" backups are more prone to failure and problems and would probably advise you to do only full backups (new images of the entire partition). You might then keep say a couple of full backups--perhaps make images monthly and keep the most recent 2 or 3. Delete the oldest every time you make a new one. Something like that. Images are quite large, so you probably don't want to keep a dozen full images.

If you are referring to something other than images, such as a "file by file" backup program for personal files, you will find that such programs are typically designed to back up ONLY new or modified files on the second and later backup. For that reason, the second backup usually takes seconds or a minute or two, whereas the first one might take hours.