should i backup my mac before buying a new one

These files may be stored on another drive, for example. RELATED: How to Move Your Documents, Music, and Other Folders Somewhere Else in Windowsįor example, it’s easy to move a folder like Music, Videos, Downloads, Pictures, or Documents to another location on your PC. If you moved them, only you know where all your files are stored. That’s because Windows lets you store your files in any location you like. You’ll notice that we’re using a lot of words like “by default”, “likely”, and “probably” when saying where your files are stored. But, if those virtual machines are important and it would take you a good amount of time to configure them again, you probably want to back them up. If you have a many gigabytes of virtual machines that take a large amount of space and you wouldn’t mind setting them up from scratch again, exclude the virtual machine folder. For example, if you store a bunch of downloaded videos in the Videos folder and you don’t mind redownloading them in the future, exclude it from the backup. You may choose to exclude certain folders from the backup if you don’t want them present. If multiple people use the same PC and have their own files, back up each user account’s folder.

This ensures you have all your personal files and settings, and you don’t have to spend much time thinking about it.

With that in mind, we recommend you back up your entire user account directory, including the hidden AppData folder. You may be able to use this data to restore an individual program’s settings if you ever need to recover from a backup. This is where programs store the settings and data specific to your user account. There’s also an AppData folder here, but you won’t see it unless you’re showing hidden files and folders. RELATED: What Is the AppData Folder in Windows? It also includes other important folders, like OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive, where offline copies of your cloud files are stored if you use these services. It even includes your Desktop folder, where many people store files. If you use iTunes for your music, iTunes stores its music library in your music folder by default. These include the Documents folder where your documents are saved to by default, the Pictures folder that likely contains any family photos you have, the Downloads folder where files are downloaded, the Music folder where your music files are probably stored, and the Videos folder where videos are stored. By default, this directory contains your user account’s data folders.

Should i backup my mac before buying a new one