How to Actually Back Up Your Life
A simple backup plan you can set up once and mostly forget.
By Lena Fischer · 6 min read
The 3-2-1 rule, plainly
Three copies of anything you cannot lose, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else physically. That is the whole strategy professionals use.
Cloud sync alone is not a backup: delete a file badly and it disappears everywhere.
A setup that takes an hour
Turn on automatic system backup to an external drive. Add a cloud backup service that keeps version history. Once a year, copy irreplaceable photos and documents to a second drive kept at another address.
Label the drives with a date and what they contain. Future you will not remember.
Test the restore
An untested backup is a hope. Twice a year, restore one random file and confirm it opens. This is the step everyone skips and the only one that proves the rest worked.
Add a calendar reminder now, and the whole system becomes maintenance-free.