How often to back up computer?

[Bob]

I'm a casual user: don't store thousands of photos; not a gamer; mostly Yahoo and Twitter, shopping, browsing, personal finance, email, etc. Just bought an external backup drive. I use it to keep a mirror image of my computer, and to back up my files. In your opinion, how often should I perform a backup? I'm looking for a time interval; I know I can do a backup if I substantially change or add anything.

I routinely backup my smartphone and GPS onto my computer every 45 days.
Thank you, Dunbar. Will remember "incremental."

[Rainbow Cupcakes]

hi

[Stinky Felix]

when that day comes — and it will — you will lose everything new on your computer since the last save.
it's entirely up to you how much that stuff is worth, and so how often to back-up.

[SPYDERBLADE]

It's a matter of personal preference. I would do mine every 30 days, at least, only because I download large amounts of videos.

[simon]

If ive jsut finished a lot of important work straight away. But the windows one slow is putting it mildly and how it needs 200GB everytime to backup I do not know. I dont trust windows image with my important stuff. This week Im going over to Nero. That does incremental backups so it does one then only backsup the changes not the whole thing over and over.

[DunbarPappy®ϟϟ]

If you set the utility to "incremental" backups (saving only 'new' stuff and changes to previously archived files), you can do a weekly.
If you're doing full backups, then your media will get used up copying things over and over. Why?

[Arnold]

I do backups in stages. I have several thumb-drives and external hard-drives that I use.

Files in my "working folder" are saved to my hard-drive, then backed up to my thumb drive every time I use them.

I also save an image of my Home folder (I'm a Linux user) to a WD Elements hard-drive about once a month.

I don't bother saving internet favorites or temp files.

I also have a laptop and a desktop and routinely cross-check my files between the two to make sure I have copies of all the important files on my laptop backed up on my desktop.

[A]

Normally once per month is a reasonable frequency but if you are already doing your phone every 45 days then every 45 days the day after you back up your phone onto the computer would make sense.

There is no reason you have to be on a fixed schedule, if you've not done much on the computer in the last month then there is no real benefit to backing it up, if you're working on something important then back it up every few days.