Through years of owning computers, I've somewhat diligently made backup copies of my data on floppy disks, zip disks, CDs or DVDs, and thumb drives.
I'm not an early adapter. Now I'm thinking of getting an external hard drive in hopes of saving some agony when my current computer dies (in the distant future of course). It's a 700GB laptop running on Windows 7. As I understand it, I should get an external drive of at least 700 or 750GB size.
My question is: do these external drives usually come with applications that make it easy to do complete, freshened backups in not too much time? Can the software be set to do this automatically at intervals of my choice like daily, weekly or biweekly?
What is the difference between backup and disk imaging software? Will both enable me to save software installations like Microsoft Office, Windows Media Player playlists, and various messengers, so that I don't have to sit through the lengthy loading required at first?
If the abilities I want do not come with the hardware, do you recommend any products?
Thank you in advance.