Currently employed as an IT person and data recovery and backup is big part of my job, I too will add that purchasing a external hard drive is the best way to go. I have different clients here at work that will use a external hard drive and a usb flash drive, but it depends on how much data you have and if you want to back up your entire hard drive.

Backing up your entire hard drive takes a lot of time and also, it's good to keep in mind that when you back up your entire hard drive (if that is the route chosen) you will need to reinstall software/applications. Just copying and transferring them is not good enough. Now, there is cloning one's hard drive and once it's restored, everything is the exactly the way you had it. I've been involved with that recently. I normally work on laptops at my job and I had a Dell Lattitude laptop that a client had a hard drive replaced (physical damage to the drive in his case so there was no data corruption) I cloned the old drive and restored the contents to his new drive and everything was exactly the way it was before his issue. Backing up your data is very important and should be done frequently. I'm constantly reminding my clients here at work to do this regularly instead of waiting for us to get their laptop and then later having to tell them I'm unable to retreive their data. Of course, it all depends on the condition of the drive. We have tools but sometimes we do have bad news to give to them- There are data recovery centers that do extensive data recovery, but they also can be very expensive.

Renee