What actually needs backing up
For most households it is photographs, documents, and whatever the business side of the family runs on. The photographs are the ones people grieve over, because unlike a computer they cannot be bought again.
How we set it up
- A copy that happens automatically, because a manual backup is one you will stop doing
- A second copy somewhere else, since a burglary or a fire takes the external drive too
- Enough history to survive a problem you do not notice for a month
- A check that it is still running, rather than assuming
- Showing you how to get a file back yourself
One copy is not a backup
Files that exist only on a single external drive are one drop away from gone, and drives fail without warning. Files that sync to a cloud folder are also not backed up in the way people assume: delete something or let it become corrupted, and the sync faithfully copies that everywhere.
Questions we get asked
- Is my phone backing up my photos already?
- It might be, and it might have quietly stopped when storage filled up. It is worth ten minutes to check rather than finding out later.
- What does a home backup cost to run?
- It depends on how much you have and where it goes. It is usually far less than people expect, and always less than recovery.