Floppy disks hold 1.44 megabytes of data. That was adequate years ago when people were just moving text files around. Today, large audio and video files won't come close to fitting on a floppy. To back them up, you need a higher-capacity drive. Internal disk drives install in an open slot in your computer.
External models are portable and can be used with other computers but are more expensive.
To save storage space, users should back up only data files and not program files, said John Roach of the Computer Learning Center in West Des Moines. Users are generally better off reinstalling their software from scratch rather than trying to restore it from a backup. The most popular way to save and share files is with a CD-rewritable drive, also known as a CD burner or recorder, because the drive can hold a whopping 650 Mb of data on one disc. That's about 500 times the capacity of a floppy disk. And nearly all computers have a CD-ROM drive that can read these homemade CDs.