It could even be faster than most flash drives, especially if it’s a 7200rpm model.

Most flash drives use cheap storage that slow down during sustained reads and writes.

First, you should probably determine if your hard drive is a 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch model.

Hard drive connected to a USB adapter on a wooden surface.

Jordan Gloor / How-To Geek

Then it’s possible for you to buy an enclosure for your hard drive’s size.

If you have a 2.5-inch drive, something like theSabrent USB 3.0 enclosurewill work.

A good, easy-to-assemble USB 3 hard drive enclosure.

Side-by-side comparison of a 2.5-inch SSD and a 3.5-inch hard drive.

Corbin Davenport / How-To Geek

You should format the hard drive after placing it in an enclosure.

NAS units also make it easy to set up RAID arrays to mirror your data across multiple drives.

Some high-end routers haveUSB portsfor connecting hard drives without a dedicated NAS enclosure.

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A good, easy-to-assemble USB 3 hard drive enclosure.

if it’s making weird sounds or having read errors, it won’t be a reliable backup).

Both options allow you to exclude folders that you don’t need backed up.

There are a few different solutions for Linux systems,such as rsync.

Xbox storage settings screen with options to use storage for media or games.

Corbin Davenport / How-To Geek

Both File History and Time Machine will delete older backups as the drive fills to maximum capacity.

Check outour dedicated guide for creating an ultimate USB boot drivefor the exact steps and more information.

Disk Utility screen showing a pie chart for a partitioned drive.

Ventoy software interface with a list of bootable ISO files.

Ventoy