Easy steps to keep your Windows 8 PC backed up

With the recent release of Windows 8 from Microsoft, keeping your PC protected and backed up is simple and effective in the rare event of a system failure. Let's get it setup!

To start, lets move the mouse to the right hand side of the screen, and choose the search option from the charms that appear on the right. (see pic). In the box that appears type "recovery". Choose the settings option underneath the search box, and one of the options in the list should be labeled windows 7 file recovery. Don't worry about the fact it says windows 7, this is just carried over from the previous versions of windows, so if you already have a backup, you can continue to use it.

The next screen that appears should look something like this:

As you can see, this computer that I'm using is already backing up to a network location, however if you haven't already got yours setup, there should be a setup backup option you can click on to start the wizard which will guide you through the process.

The first screen will ask you where you want to save your backup. I'd recommend saving it to a external hard drive, or a network drive, as there is no point saving it to the same hard drive your computer is currently using, as that would render the whole back up process pointless if your hard drive fails :)

As you can see, I have a few hard drives and a network location saved on this computer to use. I'm going with the network drive option. If you want to save on a network also, you can click save on a network button which will take you to a separate screen to get setup.

Once you've chosen what your location, you then need to choose what you want to back up. You can let windows decide, or you can choose what you want to back up. I like this option, as I feel it gives me more control over what will be backed up, opposed to what might be backed up. The next screen, asks what specifically I want backed up.

In this instance I am backing up my libraries, and everything on my system drive. If you only have one hard drive, I'd recommend choosing to enable the system image option.

Clicking next will review the settings you've selected and you can save and exit the wizard. The computer will then start backing up your files.

Things to note:

1. If you've selected an external backup drive, make sure it's plugged in when you want to back up
2. If it's not, Windows will wait till the next time it is to make the backup
3. I'd suggest to come back to the back up page every now and then to make sure it still is backing things up for you and that the settings are still up to date.

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