At their simplest, these devices are used to make a copy of everything created and saved on a computer, whether it be written documents, presentations, images, videos, or anything else. And while photos and messages from our smartphones are regularly backed up to the cloud, making a physical backup is still highly recommended, especially for professionals working with digital files.īefore thinking all backup drives are broadly the same, note that there is a wide range of options to consider, each with different features, designs and prices. As anyone who has lost important files to a corrupted hard drive will attest, creating backups is a crucial part of modern computing.