View Single Post - Hard Drive backup, internal vs external

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It depends.
If you are using some kinds of backup software, the backups depend on a catalog,and can only be restored to the drive from which they came (useless in my book) In which case it doesn't matter, if you have total hardware failure, you're screwed.
Better software creates an standard ISO image of the drive (or a compressed version of it) in this case and external drive would allow you to easily restore the backup on another drive/computer should your computer suffer a severe problem (like bursting in to flame)
A networked backup to another computer, external drive or remote location would be the best backup, but potentially the least secure (depends where you send it and how secure your network is)