If you’ve survived without backups and not lost data, you’ve been lucky so far. But why push your luck? There are a bunch of free & cheap ways to backup that could save you from the pain of losing data. Even better, you could help out your family, and give a gift that almost nobody will thank you for. At least until they drop their phone down the toilet. Then you’ll be hailed a total hero!
What is a Backup?
First, I have to get this out of the way. A backup is an extra copy of the files. If you don’t have two or more copies of something in different places, it’s not a backup. A common mistake is buying an external “backup” drive, and then filling it up with data that you don’t have anywhere else. All that does is move the problem from one disk to another. If the “backup” drive fails you’ll still need to get it recovered professionally (👋). If you had another disk with the same files on, you’d be fine. It might sound wasteful to keep multiple copies of your files, but it is the only safe way. Even the most reliable disks have a 1% failure rate. If you made a backup copy of a paper document, you wouldn’t shred the original, so just think like that.
What is a Cloud? ☁️
A cloud is just a server somewhere. Modern cloud services are just huge networks of servers that can store your data.
iPhones & iPads
iCloud
If you’re an iPhone or iPad user, you can’t beat iCloud for convenience. With an iCloud backup, you can load a replacement iPhone or iPad with your data, and carry on where you left off. It might seem unfair that Apple will sell you a phone for £1,099 and then want an extra £0.79 per month for iCloud, but once you get past that, it really is worth every penny. For under £10 per year, you’ll be mad to not sign up.
Family Sharing
If you have multiple iPhones & iPads in your household, you can also share iCloud storage using Family Sharing. That way, you can buy one of the larger storage plans and backup all the iDevices in your house. All the data is still kept privately for each person in iCloud, but the total storage is shared. This will also give you some other useful features like shared family calendars, notes & reminders.
Google Photos
Google photos works across pretty much any device. It doesn’t matter if you run it from your iPhone, Android Tablet, a PC, whatever. The free version only has a fairly small allowance (currently 15GB), but you can then pay extra for more storage as you need it. (£24.99 per year for 200GB in 2023)
Android Phones & Tablets
Google One. That’s the Google equivalent of iCloud and has tools to backup devices, and photos. (See above.)
Mac & PC
Regardless of what PC or Mac you have, you can’t beat an external hard drive for value. As long as your internal disk is big enough to fit all your files, you can then use an external drive to keep an extra copy of everything. If your internal disk is too small, the best option is to upgrade it, and then also keep an external backup drive. If you don’t (or can’t) upgrade the internal disk, you’ll need to juggle data and backups around external disks. This increases your risk of missing something.
Computers can also use cloud storage, so if you already use one on your phone, it’s worth seeing what you can share with your PC or Mac.
iCloud on your Mac will let you sync photos and documents but doesn’t allow you to backup and restore to the cloud the way it does with iPhones. If you use iCloud on a Mac, I’d still recommend an external drive.
Attach an external drive to a Mac, and it will offer to use it as a backup with Time Machine. ⚠️ Be aware that it will erase the disk first! Time Machine will take a copy of your whole Mac, and keep it up to date. Even if you only plug the disk in once a month, Time Machine will catch up with any new files and copy them over automatically. If your Mac dies, you can use the backup drive to load the data to a repaired or replaced Mac.
Windows 10/11 has a backup feature named “File History.” Much like Time Machine, you can select an external disk for backups, and then file history will keep track of file changes automatically. Unlike the Mac, File History doesn’t backup software and settings, so you’d need to get things setup another way first before you load the files back.
Conclusion
Do yourself a favour and get your files backed up. Remember, you don’t need to backup everything, just the things you don’t want to lose 😜!
