I have had a lot of people ask how to back files from their computer so they can get rid of it or replace it or rebuild it with a new operating system (OS). There are a lot of options out there that can do this in different ways. I tend to bucket all these into two main categories. Cloud-based back and physical back-ups. Cloud-based backups are services that sync files into an online service run by some other company. Your files are synced to servers they run and manage and provide some level of guarantee about reliability, security, and availability. Here is some popular option: Carbonite iCloud Onedrive Dropbox Google Drive Physical back-ups are backups you make of the files with some type of physical storage you have alongside the computer you are backing up. Normally these are point-in-time backups. Meaning your data is only backed from that last time you remembered to do a copy of the files yourself (I know there are physical devices that will do scheduled backups bu