Everyone knows they should back up, and most people only do it after losing data for the first time. The most common weakness is not a missing copy, but a copy kept in the same place as the original, or one that has never been tested by restoring.
What is the 3-2-1 rule?
- 3 copies of your data: 1 in use and 2 backups.
- 2 different kinds of storage, for example the drive inside the machine and an external drive.
- 1 copy kept somewhere else, such as cloud storage or at a relative's home.
The idea of the rule: a single incident such as fire, theft, a failed drive or malware cannot wipe out everything at once.
Applying it to each case
| Who | Important data | Backup suggestion |
|---|---|---|
| Families | Photos, videos, scanned documents | External drive plus a cloud service that syncs photos automatically |
| Small shops | Sales files, accounting, customer lists | Daily backup to an external drive, weekly to the cloud |
| Offices | Shared data, email | NAS or a file server with an off-site backup |
| Design / video editing | Large project files | Large external drives, rotating two of them |
A backup you have never restored is not yet a backup
Every quarter, open a few random files from the backup. We once saw a backup run regularly for two years while the destination folder had long been full and could only write old files. It was found only when a restore was needed.
Backups and ransomware
Ransomware that encrypts files will also encrypt any drive plugged into the machine. So a copy should be disconnected after backing up, or the cloud should keep older versions for restoring.
How large should the backup drive be?
Do I need to back up Windows itself?
ANTECH sets it up and tests a restore for you.
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