Back up what you’d hate to lose - and check it actually works
Ransomware, a dead hard drive, a lost phone, one wrong tap - your photos and documents can vanish in a second, and no security setting brings them back. A backup does. The catch most people miss: a backup you’ve never tested isn’t a backup, it’s a hope. Here’s the simple version that actually holds up.
The rule worth remembering: 3-2-1
Three copies of anything you’d hate to lose, on two different kinds of storage, with one kept somewhere else. It sounds like a lot; in practice it’s your device, plus an external drive, plus a cloud copy. That’s it.
Turn on the easy automatic one
iPhone / Mac: iCloud, and Time Machine to an external drive. Android: Google One backup. Windows: File History or OneDrive, plus an external drive. Automatic beats manual, because “manual” quietly becomes “never”.
Add a copy that lives somewhere else
The “1” of 3-2-1. A cloud copy, or a second external drive you keep at work or a relative’s and swap now and then - so a fire, a flood, or a burglary can’t take your originals and your only backup together.
Now the step everyone skips: test it
Actually restore one file from your backup today. If you can’t - wrong password, backup never ran, drive unreadable - you’ve found out now rather than on the worst day. Do it once now, and once a year after.
Protect the backup from ransomware
Modern ransomware deliberately hunts for attached backup drives and encrypts those too. A cloud backup that keeps version history, or a drive you unplug between backups, survives it - a drive left permanently plugged in may not.
“Isn’t cloud backup a privacy risk?”
A fair question for a privacy app. Turn on the provider’s end-to-end encryption where it’s offered - Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, or a zero-knowledge backup provider - and the copy is readable only by you. Then it’s both safe from loss and private.
Last checked: 19 October 2026.