SMS texts

Your cellular service provider may provide backup capabilities for your SMS text messages, and your phone’s operating system may provide general device backup features that include all SMS messages within the backups. If not, or if you choose not to use such backups, various apps can be downloaded from Google Play and Apple App Store that provide such features specifically.

Social media

Every major social media platform allows you to download all of your respective social media account’s data. While many people seem to think that there is no reason to back up such data (after all, they reason, the social media provider does its own backups of all account data), there are actually good reasons to do so.

First, if your social media account were somehow breached and taken over by a hacker, and that hacker deleted material from the account, you may have difficulty getting the material back — even if you successfully regain access to the account. This is true even if the social media provider actually has a backup in its possession of your original data; remember, restoring your data is not its highest priority.

Second, there is no guarantee that social media providers will remain in business forever. People are fickle, and while certain mainstay platforms may seem now to be “too big to fail,” that is most definitely not the case. Not that many years ago, MySpace was the dominant platform, with few people knowing about something called “The Face Book.” How things have changed!

And while MySpace is still around in some form, Friendster, which had over 100 million users, and Yik Yak, which had a valuation of over $400 million, have vanished, taking with them to the history books any access to the data that they once held for people. Also gone are Google Plus and Vine, and while the companies that last operated them still exist as tech giants (Vine was acquired by Twitter), the platforms are dead and the material that was on them is no longer easily accessible.

Third, a social media provider itself may be hacked, or otherwise go offline. Not that long ago, the right-wing social media network, Parler, for example, went offline completely for a period of many months. People who wanted to access their accounts could not do so.

While the exact mechanisms of backing up data vary between platforms, there is typically a function within the settings or help menus called Download Account Data or something of the like. You should periodically use it.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook (now known as Meta) in 2014, is arguably the world’s most popular tool for communication; its operator claims that the tool has more than 2 billion users worldwide.

To back up your Android device’s WhatsApp data, go into the Settings menu in the top-right corner of your screen, tap Chats, tap Chat Backup, and either tap BACKUP to manually back up, or configure the appropriate settings for periodic automatic backups. On Apple devices, you can reach the Chat Backup feature by tapping Settings at the bottom-right corner of the screen, tapping Chats, and then tapping Chat Backup.

Google Photos

If you use Google Photos, you can also separately configure Google to sync copies of your photos and videos on your phone to storage space in the cloud (Google Drive). To do so, click your profile photo that appears in the top-right corner of the screen in the Google Photos app, click Photos Settings, Click Backup & Sync, and turn on the feature accordingly.

Other apps

Many other apps offer backup capabilities. Look through the app’s settings options, or check help forums online, if you have difficulty finding such features.

If you back up app data and store the backups on your laptop’s local hard disk or solid state drive (SSD), and then back up that laptop drive as described in the following sections, you will have copies of your app backups within your laptop backups. If you typically use apps on a smartphone, ideally don’t back up to only that device.

Android

Android provides two ways to back up your data and apps: automatic backups and by backing up manually.

Apple

Apple offers several built-in ways to back up your iPhone (or other iOS device).

Full backups of systems

A full system backup is a backup of an entire system, including the operating system, programs/apps, settings, and data. The term applies whether the device being backed up is a smartphone or a massive server in a data center.

Technically speaking, a full system backup includes a backup of all drives attached to a system, not just those mounted inside of it — although if some drives are attached to the system only from time to time and are not needed for the primary use of the system, some might exclude the contents of such drives from full system backups, especially if they’re attached to other systems, or are backed up as part of the backup of other systems. For most home users, however, a full system backup means exactly what it sounds like: Backing up everything.

A full system backup is sometimes known as a system image because it essentially contains an image of the system as it existed at a particular point in time. If a device that you have an image of fails, you should be able to use the system image to re-create the entire system as it was at the time that the backup was made. When you use the rebuilt system, it should function exactly as the previous system did at the time of the backup.

Full system backups typically do not include backing up any material that is accessible to a system via a network share. So, if your computer has a network drive mounted as N:, for example, a full system backup run on the device may not include the data you have stored on N:.

Full system backups are the form of backup that typically is fastest to restore an entire system from, but they take longer to create than other forms of backup. They also usually require more storage space.

One important caveat: Because a system backup includes settings, hardware drivers, and so on, restoring from a system image does not always work well if you restore to a different device than the one that was originally backed up. If you imaged a laptop that runs Windows 7 as its operating system, for example, and then acquired a newer device intended to run Windows 11, which has different hardware in it, a restored system image of the first device may not work well on the newer device. The reverse is even more likely to be true: If you keep an old computer in your closet “just in case” and that just-in-case situation turns into reality, your attempts to restore the image from a newer machine to the older machine may fail fully or in part.

System images are sometimes referred to as ghosts (with ghost also being the verb for creating such images), especially among techies. The name originates from one of the original disk cloning software packages for PCs.

It is important to note that some backup software packages offer “full system backups” that do not truly image everything on a system. Always read the “fine print” when software provides information about a backup option.

Original system images

One special case of system images is the original system image, also known as a factory image.

Many modern computing devices, whether laptops, tablets, or smartphones, come equipped with a factory image that can be restored. This means that when you acquire the device, it comes with an image of the original configuration that you receive — including the operating system, all the original software, and all the default settings — stored in a hidden partition or other storage mechanism not normally accessible to users.

At any point in time, you can perform a factory reset and set your device to look identical to the way that it did when it was new. When you do so, the device restores from the hidden image.

Three important caveats:

• Some computers allow users to manually overwrite factory images if they so desire. It is highly recommended that you not do so. If you need more storage space, obtain it elsewhere.
• Some devices overwrite the factory reset image with new images in the event of certain operating system upgrades.
• If you factory reset a computer, all security updates installed since the factory image was originally created will not be present on the restored device. Be sure to update your system ASAP after restoring and before going online for any other purpose!

Later system images

Some systems also create periodic images that you can restore from without having to go back to the original factory settings. Windows 10 and Windows 11, for example, have such capabilities built in.

Never restore from an image unless you know that any problems that developed and caused you to need to restore did so after that image was made.

Original installation media

Original installation media is for programs that you acquire and install after you purchased your device. If software came on a DVD, CD, or USB drive, saving the physical media that it came on allows you to reinstall the software in case of a problem.

Keep in mind, however, that if any updates for the software were issued and installed subsequent to the original installation, you will need to redownload and reinstall the updates. Doing so may happen automatically upon reinstallation, or it may require manual effort.

Downloaded software

If you’ve acquired programs since you purchased your device, it’s likely that some or all of them were delivered to you via digital download.

When software is delivered as a download, the downloader does not receive a physical copy. However, if you received software via a download, you can store a copy of the installation file that you downloaded on one or more of many different types of media, such as a thumb drive or a CD or DVD. Alternatively, you can store the copy on a hard drive, but be sure to back up that drive if it is part of your computer infrastructure.

In addition, some stores that sell downloadable software maintain copies of the software for you in a virtual locker so that you can download it at a later date. Such “backups” are useful, but be sure that you know how long the store will maintain the product in your locker. Some people have had serious problems because they relied on such “backups” only to find out that the software was not available to them at the time that they needed it.

For music and video files, the vendor’s retention period is often theoretically forever, or at least as long as the material is available to purchase by others. For software, as new versions are released and old versions are sunsetted (the technical term for a software vendor phasing out and, ultimately, terminating support for an obsolete version of its software), the retention period may be far shorter.

Full backups of data

An alternative to performing a full backup of the entire system is to perform a full backup of the data on the system, but not of software and the operating system. (Configuration settings for both the operating system and various installed programs are often stored in data folders and included in such backups.) Performing a full data backup allows users to restore all of their data in one shot if something goes wrong. Depending on the tool used to perform the backup, users may be able to restore a subset of the data as well — for example, by choosing to restore only one particular file that they accidentally deleted.

Restoring from a full data backup will not restore applications. If a system has to be rebuilt entirely, recovering from full backups of data likely requires prior restorations to factory settings (or a later image of the computer) and reinstallation of all software. That is certainly more tedious than simply restoring from a system image. At the same time, it is also far more portable. The recovery can usually be done without any problems on many devices that vary quite a bit from the original device. Reduce the likelihood of your restored system suffering a security breach by updating the reinstalled software with the latest patches immediately after the relevant installations.

Incremental backups

Incremental backups are backups made after a full backup and that contain copies of only the portion of data (or, in the case of a system backup, the portion of the entire system) that has changed since the preceding backup (full or incremental) was run.

Incremental backups normally run much faster than full backups because, on most systems, the vast majority of data files do not change on a regular basis. For the same reason, incremental backups also use less storage space than do full backups.

To recover data, however, restoration must be done from the last full backup plus all the incremental backups performed since that last full backup.

If you decide to use incremental backups, consider limiting the number of such backups that you create after a full backup. For example, if you did only one full backup on the first day of the calendar month and performed incremental backups on all subsequent days until the next month began, then if something went wrong on the last day of the month, you would potentially need to restore from as many as 30 backups in order to recover your files.

Many people (and many businesses as well) choose to do full system backups on one of the days of the weekend and then do incremental backups during each other day of the week, thereby finding a happy medium between the efficiency gains during the backup process and the potential for a tedious recovering process.

Differential backups

Differential backups contain all the files that changed since the last full backup. (They are similar to the first in a series incremental backups run after a full backup.) A series of differential backups therefore requires more time to run and uses more storage space than incremental backups, but less than the same number of full backups. Recovering from differential backups can be faster and simpler than doing so from incremental backups because a restore needs to be done from only the last full backup and last differential backup.

If you decide to use differential backups, consider how many backups you should be making before making the next full backup. If the differential backup starts to grow quite large, there will not be much performance gains while making the backup, and any restoration will take far longer than if done from just a full backup.

Many people (and many businesses as well) choose to do full system backups on one of the days of the weekend, and then do differential backups during each other day of the week.

Mixed backups

Incremental and differential backups are made in conjunction with full backups, as shown in Table 14-1.

Do not mix incremental and differential backups within the same backup scheme, as doing so can create complexity and lead to confusion and costly mistakes.

Continuous backups

Continuous backups refers to backups that run continuously. Every time that a change is made to data (or to a system and data), a backup of that change is made.

Continuous backups are great in case of a hard drive failure in the primary system — the backup is available and up-to-date — but do little in the case of a malware infection or data destruction, as the malware typically propagates to the backup as soon as it infects the primary system.

One exception are complex backup systems that log each backup action and have the ability to reverse them. These backups can undo problematic portions of backups to the point that they occurred.

The process of continuously backing up is sometimes known as syncing (or synchronizing). You may see it described as such on your electronic devices or within various software packages.

Partial backups

Partial backups are backups of a portion of data. As opposed to full backups, partial backups do not back up all elements of data from a system. If a system were to be completely hosed, for example, you would have no way to fully recover all of its data contents from partial backups made earlier of that system.

Partial backups can be implemented in a full incremental-like model in which the first backup in a series includes all the elements that are part of the set included in the partial backup, and subsequent backups in the series include only items from that set that have changed.

Partial backups can also be implemented as always full-like — in which case, all elements of the set included in the partial backup are backed up each time, regardless of whether or not they have changed since the last backup.

Partial backups are not intended to be full backups in case of a malware attack or the like. They are useful, however, in other situations, such as one in which a particular set of files needs to be backed up separately due to the needs of a particular individual or group or due to the sensitivity of the material. For example, while the IT department may do full and incremental backups of all files on a shared network drive, the accountants who need constant access to a particular set of spreadsheets stored on that drive — and would be unable to work if those files become inaccessible — may set up their own backups of just those files. They can use their backups if something goes wrong when they are on the road or working from home on the weekend, without the need to bother members of the technical support department to work unnecessarily on a Sunday.

Folder backups

Folder backups, are similar to partial backups in situations where the set of items being backed up is a particular folder. While backup tools can facilitate folder backups, to the chagrin of many cybersecurity professionals and IT departments, many users perform such backups in an ad hoc fashion by manually making a copy of hard drive (or SSD) folders to USB drives at the end of each workday and consider such backups to be sufficient protection in case of problems.

Theoretically, of course, such backups work and can be used to recover from many problems. Reality dictates, however, that ad hoc backup procedures almost never result in proper backups: People forget on some days to back up or do not back up because they’re hurried, neglect to back up some materials that they should have backed up, store the backups on insecure devices in insecure locations, or lose the devices on which the backups are stored — you get the idea!

If you want to be sure that you have proper backups when you need them — and, at some point, you are likely to need them — do not rely on ad hoc folder backups.

Never back up a folder onto the same drive as the original folder resides. If the drive fails, you will lose both the primary source of data as well as the backup copy.

Drive backups

A drive backup is similar to a folder backup, but for situations where an entire drive is being backed up instead of only a folder. Ad hoc backups of drives do afford some protection, but rarely deliver sufficient protection against risks of losing data.

Never store the backup of a drive on the same drive as the one being backed up. If the drive fails, you will lose the primary source of data and the backup copy.

Virtual drive backups

One special case of drive backup is that in which a person or organization uses an encrypted virtual drive. For example, users may store their files within a BitLocker drive on Windows. BitLocker is a utility built in to many version of Windows that allows users to create a virtual drive that appears as any other drive to the user when it is in use, but appears as one giant encrypted file when not in use. To access the drive, the user must unlock it, normally by entering a password.

Backing up such drives is often accomplished by simply including the encrypted file within the full, incremental, folder, or drive backup. As such, all contents of the encrypted drive are copied without being referred to by name and remain inaccessible to anyone who does not know how to open the encrypted drive. Many backups tools offer drive backups in addition to more structured forms of backup.

Some software packages refer to the creation of an image of an entire disk as cloning.

While such a scheme protects the contents of the encrypted drive as they live in backups by using the same encryption as was used for the primary copies, note several caveats:

• Even if one small change was made to a single file within the virtual drive, the entire encrypted file will be changed. As such, a 1KB change could easily lead to an incremental backup having to back up an entire 1TB file.
• The backup is useless for recovery unless someone knows how to unlock the encrypted drive. While encryption may be a good defense mechanism against unauthorized parties snooping on sensitive files in the backup, it also means that the backup is not, on its own, fully usable for recovery. It is not hard to imagine problems developing as a result — for example, if someone attempting to utilize a backup several years after it was originally made forgets the access code, or if the person who created a backup is unavailable at the time that someone needs to restore from it.
• As with all encrypted data, there is a risk that as computers become more powerful — and, especially, as quantum computing takes hold — today’s encryption may not offer sufficient protection against brute force attacks. While production systems will, no doubt, be upgraded with better encryption capabilities over time (as they already have been since the 56-bit encryption of the 1990s), backups that were made with old encryption technology and keys may become vulnerable to decryption by unauthorized parties. Hence, encryption may not forever protect your sensitive data contained in backups. You must store such backups in a secure location or destroy them when they are no longer needed.

Exclusions

Some files and folders do not need to be backed up unless you are imaging a disk (in which case the image must looks exactly like the disk). Operating system paging files and other temporary files that serve no purpose if a system is restored, for example, need not be backed up.

The following are examples of some such files and folders that you can exclude from backups on a Windows 10 machine. If you’re using backup software, the software likely comes with a built-in list of default exclusions that may resemble this list:

• The Recycle Bin, which effectively temporarily backs up deleted files in case users change their minds about deleting them
• Browser caches, which are temporary Internet files from web browsers, such as Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, or Opera
• Temporary folders, which are often called Temp or temp and reside in c:, in the user directory, or in the data directory of software
• Temporary files, which are usually named *.tmp or *.temp
• Operating system swap files, such as pagefile.sys
• Operating system hibernation-mode system image information, such as hyberfil.sys
• Backups (unless you want to back up your backups), such as Windows File History
• Operating system files backed up during an operating system upgrade, as usually found in C:Windows.old on Windows computers that have had their operating systems upgraded
• Microsoft Outlook cache files (*.ost), but Outlook local data stores (*.pst) should be backed up (in fact, in many cases, they may be the most critical files in a backup)
• Performance log files in directories called PerfLogs
• Junk files that users create as personal temporary files to hold information, such as a text file in which users type a phone number that someone dictated to them, but that the users have since entered into their smartphone directory

To conserve storage space, some backup engines will also back up only one copy of an identical file that appears in two places instead creating two “links” to the contents of that file in the backup. Sometimes such a feature appears as an option in an Exclusions settings section.

In-app backups

Some applications have built-in backup capabilities that protect you from losing your work if your computer crashes, power fails, or you don’t have battery power left.

One such program is Microsoft Word, which offers users the ability to configure how often files should be saved for AutoRecover. For most people, this feature is quite valuable. I even benefited from this feature while writing this book!

While the mechanism of configuring AutoRecover varies between some versions of Word, in most modern versions, the process is the following or something similar: Choose File  ⇒    Options  ⇒    Save and configure the options according to your taste.

In-app backups usually take just seconds to configure, normally run without your being actively involved, and can save you a lot of aggravation. In almost all cases, you should enable the feature if it exists.

Backup software

Backup software is software designed specifically to run and manage backups and restorations from backups. You can find multiple vendors of such software, with exact features varying between products and between the platforms that they support (for example, features may vary between Windows and Mac versions of the same backup software package). Some offerings are intended for home users, some for large enterprises, and others for pretty much every level in between.

You can use backup software to manually or automatically backup — that is, you can configure it to backup specific systems, data, drives, or folders at specific times, using different backup models, such as full, incremental, and so on.

Backups can run only if a machine is on. So, be sure that your device to be backed up is on at those times! (Some backup software can be configured in cases of a missed backup to run the backup the next time that the device is booted or is idle.)

Backup software can take some time to set up, but after you do so, it can often make the process of creating proper backups much easier than any other method of backing up.

Ideally, you should configure your systems to automatically back up at specific times to make sure that you actually back up and don’t neglect doing so while you do any of the many things that come up in life.

Do not confuse these manual and automatic options with manual and automated task copying.

If you just worked on some important project or spent many hours creating some new work on your computer, however, you may want to kick off an extra manual backup to protect your work and the time that you invested in it.

Beware of bogus backup software! Unscrupulous parties offer free backup software that contains malware of various severity, ranging from annoying adware to data-stealing infectors. Make sure that you obtain your backup software (as well as any other software that you use) from a reliable source.

Drive-specific backup software

Some external hard drives and solid state devices come with built-in backup software. Such software is often extremely intuitive and easy to use, and users may find it the most convenient way to set up their backup routines.

Three caveats, however:

• Remember not to leave the drive connected to the system holding the primary data store.
• If you use drive-specific versions of backup software, you may need to purchase all your backup drives from the same manufacturer in order not to complicate backup and restore procedures.
• Drive-specific software is less likely to support newer technologies as they emerge from other vendors than is general backup software.

Windows Backup

Windows comes equipped with basic backup software built in. The software sports several features, and, for many people, may be sufficient. Using Windows Backup is certainly better than not backing up at all.

You can configure Windows Backup in two places:

• In the Settings App, in the Update and Security Section.
• Via the traditional Control Panel, which can be run from the Start Menu. Backup and Restore is an item in the traditional All Items view or in the System and Security section of the modern view.

Additionally, a Windows File Backup utility automatically backs up files as you modify them. You can access its configuration options via the Control Panel File History option. If you have plenty of disk space and work efficiently, make sure that your files are backed up quite often.

For more on restoring files from Windows File History, see Chapter 15.

Smartphone/tablet backup

Many devices come equipped with the ability to automatically sync your data to the cloud — a process that allows you to restore the data to a new device if your device is lost or stolen. Even devices that do not have this feature built in almost always can run software that effectively delivers these features for a specific folder tree or drive.

Using the sync feature provides great protection, but it also means that your data is sitting in the cloud — which, simply means that it is on someone else’s computer — and potentially accessible to both the cloud-service provider (in the case of most smartphones, the provider would be Apple or Google), as well as to any government agencies that demand access to the relevant data while armed with a warrant, rogue insiders, or hackers who manage to somehow obtain access to it.

As discussed earlier, syncing also typically means that if you delete something on your device, it gets deleted from the synced copy (which means syncing is not sufficient on its own as a means of backing up).

Even if you haven’t committed any crimes, the government may still demand your data as part of data collection procedures related to crimes committed by other people. Even if you trust the government not to abuse your data, the government itself has had several breaches and data leaks, so you have good reason not to trust it to adequately protect your information from being stolen by other parties who may abuse it.

Before you decide whether or not to use the sync, think about the pros and cons.

Manual file or folder copying backups

Manual backups are exactly what they sound like: backups performed manually, often by people copying files, folders, or both from their primary hard drive (or solid-state drive) to a network folder or thumb drive.

Manual backups have their purpose, but using them on their own is not usually a good backup strategy. People inevitably do not perform such backups as frequently as they should, do not properly store such backups, and often do not back up all the items they should be storing copies of.

Automated task file or folder copying backups

Automated-task backups are essentially manual backups on steroids; they are manual backups that are run by a computer automatically instead of by people manually kicking them off. While automating the backup process reduces the risk of forgetting to back up or not backing up due to someone being hurried, file and folder copying is still risky because if some sensitive information is, for some reason, not stored in the proper folder, it may not be backed up.

One possible exception is the case of virtual drives. If users automate the process of copying of the file containing the entire drive on which they store all of their data files, such backups may be sufficient. For most home users, however, setting up an automated copying routine is not a practical solution. Using backup software is a far simpler, and better, option.

Local storage

Storing a local copy of your backup — meaning somewhere near a home computer or readily accessible to the owner of a smartphone, tablet, or laptop — is a good idea. If you accidentally delete a file, you can quickly restore it from the backup.

That said, you should never keep all your backups local. If you store your backups in your house, for example, and your house were to be severely damaged in a natural disaster, you could simultaneously lose your primary data store (for example, your home computer) and your backups.

Backups should always be stored in a secure location — not on a bookshelf. A fireproof and waterproof safe bolted down to the floor or fastened to the wall are two good options.

Also, keep in mind that hard drives and other magnetic media are less likely to survive certain disasters than solid-state drives, thumb drives, and other devices containing memory chips.

Offsite storage

Because one of the purposes of backing up is to have the ability to preserve data (and systems) even if your primary copy is destroyed, you want to have at least one backup offsite — meaning in a different location than your primary data store.

Opinions differ as to how far away from the primary store the backup should be kept. Essentially, the general rule is to keep the backups far away enough that a natural disaster that severely impacts the primary site would not impact the secondary.

Some people store a backup copy of their data in a fireproof and waterproof bag inside a safe deposit box. Bank safes typically survive natural disasters, so even if the bank is relatively close to the primary site, the backup is likely to survive even if it cannot be retrieved for several days.

Cloud

Backing up the cloud offers the benefits of offsite storage. If you lose all your equipment and systems to a natural disaster, for example, a copy of your data will almost always still exist in the cloud. Also, from a practical standpoint, the odds are that the information-security team at any major provider of cloud storage has much greater knowledge of how to keep data secure than do most individuals and have at their disposal tools that the average person cannot afford to purchase or license.

At the same time, cloud-based backup has its drawbacks.

When using cloud-based backup, you are relying on a third-party to protect your data. While that party may have more knowledge and better tools at its disposal, its primary concern is not you. If a breach occurs, for example, and large customers are impacted, its priorities may lie in addressing their concerns before addressing yours. Also, major sites are often major targets for hackers because they know that such sites contain a treasure trove of data, far greater than what they may be able to lift from your home PC. Of course, if the government serves the cloud provider a warrant, law enforcement agents may obtain copies of your backups — even, in some cases, if the warrant was served because it has demonstrated probable cause only that someone else (and not you) committed a crime.

That said, for most people, cloud-based backup makes sense, with the pros outweighing the cons, especially if you encrypt your backups, thereby making their contents inaccessible to the cloud provider.

When it comes to computers, cloud really means “someone else’s computers.” Anytime you store sensitive data, including sensitive data within in backups, in the cloud, you’re really storing it on some physical computer belonging to someone else. The cloud provider may offer better security than you can offer yourself, but do not expect that your using the cloud will somehow magically eliminate cybersecurity risks.

Network storage

Backing up to a network drive offers a blend of features from several of the prior locations for storing backups.

Like a local backup, a network backup is normally readily available, but perhaps at a slightly lower speed.

Like an offsite backup, if the network server on which the backup is located is offsite, the backup is protected from site problems at the primary data’s site. Unlike offsite backup, however, unless you know for sure that the files are offsite, they may be in the same facility as the primary data.

Like cloud backup, network based backup can be restored to other devices on your network. Unlike cloud backup, it may be accessible to only devices on the same private network (which, may be a problem, or, in some situations, a good thing from a security standpoint).

Also, network storage is often implemented with redundant disks and with automatic backups, offering better protection of your data that many other storage options.

If you use network storage for backups, make sure that whatever mechanism you are using to run the backup (for example, backup software) has the proper network permissions to write to the storage. In many cases, you may need to configure a login and password.

Mixing locations

There is no reason to only back up to one location. From the perspective of restoring data quickly, the more places that you have your data securely backed up, the better. In fact, different locations provider different types of protection optimized for different situations.

Keeping one copy local so that you can quickly restore a file that you accidentally delete, as well as maintaining a backup in the cloud in case of natural disaster, for example, makes sense for many people.

Keep in mind, however, that if you do store backups in multiple locations you need to make sure all the locations are secure. If you can’t be sure about the security of some form of backup, beware and do not back up there just because “the more backups, the better.”

As different backup locations provide different strengths and weaknesses, utilizing multiple backup locations can protect you better against more risks than using just one site.