Sorry for the ignorant question(not a computer guy), but how does one back up a hard drive. Thanks in advance.
Depends on what you want to backup. If you're just backing up individual data files (pictures, MP3 files, movies, documents, etc) you'd simply copy them from one hard drive to another hard drive, USB flash drive, network,,etc. Windows 7 has a Backup utility that you can pick and choose the files and folders to backup as well. You can also use a cloud service like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. and copy the files or folders you want to backup into the special Dropbox, or Google Drive folders. The benefit here is that you can control exactly what to back up, but it can be a daunting task to locate every possible file and setting.
If you have iTunes, Google Play, Amazon data (movies, books, music and apps) that you've legally paid for, then you don't have to back them up because they live on the Internet.
Backup up your whole PC so that it saves all your settings, favourites, etc. is a bit more complicated. There is software like Acronis TruImage and Symantec Ghost that will take a snap shot of your whole PC: documents, music, settings and all. The benefit of this method is that you grab everything on your entire PC in one shot and it would be exactly the same if you copied that image onto another hard drive. The downside is that you can only back up to a separate hard drive. The image is also only as good as your last back up i.e. a 2 year old snap shot of your PC won't do you much good because you're probably installed lots of software, added documents, etc. The other issue is that you generally cannot use that snapshot on a different PC. This is also true if you decide to change a major piece of hardware on your PC like the motherboard and CPU.
