We do a lot of data recovery. Some of it is heroic — a drive that clicks, a phone that went through the wash. Most of it is heartbreakingly ordinary: the laptop was stolen, the only copy of the wedding photos was on it, and nobody had ever thought about a backup because nothing had gone wrong before.
The rule below takes ten minutes to set up and costs less than a takeaway a month. It is the same rule we use for businesses; the numbers are just smaller.
The rule
Keep 3 copies of anything you care about, on 2 different kinds of storage, with 1 copy somewhere else.
- Three copies: the original plus two backups. One backup can fail or be out of date at the exact moment you need it — it happens more than you would think.
- Two kinds of storage: for instance the computer's own drive plus an external drive, or the computer plus a cloud service. Two copies on the same physical drive are one copy with extra steps.
- One off-site: if the house floods, or a burglar takes the laptop and the drive sitting next to it, the copy that survives is the one that was somewhere else — usually a cloud service, sometimes a drive at a relative's house.
Why sync is not backup
This is the misunderstanding that catches most people. OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud Drive and Dropbox are sync services: they make the same set of files appear on all your devices. That is genuinely useful, and the files are stored on the provider's servers, so a stolen laptop does not lose them. But sync copies mistakes just as faithfully as it copies photos:
- Delete a folder by accident and it is deleted everywhere within seconds.
- Ransomware scrambles your files, and the scrambled versions sync up and replace the good ones.
- A child "tidies" the photo library on the tablet; the tidy-up syncs to the computer.
Most of these services keep a recycle bin or version history for a limited time (typically 30 days), which will save you if you notice quickly. They will not save you if you notice in three months, and they are not designed to restore a whole computer.
A backup, by contrast, is a separate copy that the computer writes to and does not automatically change when you change the original. That is the copy that gives you a way back.
What we actually recommend for a home
Copy 1 — the computer itself
Keep the things you care about in the normal places (Documents, Pictures, Desktop), not scattered across old drives and downloads folders. You cannot back up what you cannot find.
Copy 2 — an external drive with the built-in backup tool
Both Windows and macOS include a perfectly good backup program, and both are switched off until you plug in a drive and say yes.
- Windows: plug in an external drive, open Settings → Update & Security → Backup (Windows 10) or search for File History (Windows 11), and turn it on. It keeps versions of your files as they change, so you can go back to last Tuesday's copy of a document.
- Mac: plug in the drive, and macOS will offer Time Machine. Say yes. It backs up everything, hourly, and restoring a whole Mac from it is a one-screen job.
A 2 TB external drive costs roughly the price of a family cinema trip and is enough for most households. Leave it plugged in if it is a desktop; if it is a laptop, plug it in once a week and let it run while you make dinner. Put a reminder in your phone — this is the step people forget.
Copy 3 — off-site, automatic
For the off-site copy, use a cloud backup service (not a sync service — the distinction above) or, for the more technical, a second drive that lives at another address and is swapped monthly. Cloud backup services quietly copy your files overnight and keep old versions for months or years. The subscription is typically a few pounds a month for unlimited storage from one computer; we can recommend one when we set it up, and we have no commission arrangement with any of them.
If you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Google One, the extra storage that comes with it can serve as the off-site copy for the files that live in OneDrive or Drive — as long as you understand you are relying on that 30-day safety net and keep Copy 2 for anything older.
Phones
Phone photos are the single most-lost category. Turn on iCloud Photos (iPhone) or Google Photos backup (Android) and check it is actually running — open the app and look for the "backed up" tick. Then make sure those photos also reach the computer, so they are included in Copies 2 and 3. A phone backup alone is one copy, on one company's servers, tied to one account you could be locked out of.
Test it, once
A backup nobody has restored from is a hope, not a plan. Once it has been running for a week, pick a file, delete it (or rename it), and get it back from the backup. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between knowing and assuming. Do it again every few months, and after any big change — new computer, new drive, new service.
When you need us
If a drive has already failed, stop using it. Every extra minute a failing drive spins reduces the chance of recovery, and "let me just try one more thing" is how recoverable drives become unrecoverable. Our data recovery service starts with an honest assessment — what is recoverable and what it would cost — before you commit to anything.
And if you would rather someone came and set all of the above up — drive, cloud, phones, the restore test, and a one-page sheet explaining what happens where — that is a single visit, and we will label the drive so you never have to remember which one it is.