Don't lose your data: making a backup

Back up your photos, documents and contacts: the 3-2-1 rule, external drives, the cloud, phone backup, test restores and a checklist.

If your phone goes missing or your computer’s drive suddenly fails, the most valuable thing turns out not to be the device but the data on it: photos of your children growing up, scans of your diploma, six months of reports, hundreds of contacts. A device can be replaced, but a photo with no backup is gone for good. In this guide you will learn how data gets lost, what the 3-2-1 rule is, what you should back up, how to set up backups on a computer and a phone step by step, how syncing differs from backing up, and how often to update, test and encrypt your backups. At the end you will find common mistakes, a practical exercise and a checklist.

How data gets lost

Any of the following can happen to anyone.

Drive failure. The drives in computers and laptops do not last for ever. An older spinning hard drive (HDD) tends to fail gradually, while a modern SSD sometimes dies without any warning at all. The same goes for USB flash drives and memory cards.
A lost or stolen phone. When a phone is left on a bus, taken from a pocket at the bazaar or forgotten in a taxi, all its photos go with it, unless they are stored somewhere else.
Accidental deletion. Deleting the wrong folder and then emptying the Recycle Bin, or saving a file over an older version. This is the most common cause of all.
Malware and ransomware. One type of malware, ransomware, encrypts your files and demands payment to unlock them. Even if you pay, there is no guarantee you will get your files back. The reliable answer is a clean backup.
Water, drops and heat. A laptop with tea spilt on it, a phone dropped into a pool, a power supply burnt out by a voltage surge.
Losing access to your account. A forgotten password or a hacked account means data in the cloud can “disappear” too.

A hypothetical example. Dilnoza works at a training centre in Tashkent and kept a year’s worth of lesson plans and student lists on her laptop. One day the laptop would not switch on. The repair shop could not recover the most important folder. Had Dilnoza been copying her files to an external drive or the cloud every week, she would have lost only a few days’ work.

The 3-2-1 rule and what to back up

A backup is a copy of your important files that is kept somewhere else. Specialists recommend a simple, easy-to-remember rule for organising it:

3 copies. Keep important data in at least three places: the original file and two backups.
2 different types of storage. Keep the copies on different kinds of media: for example, your computer’s drive and an external drive, or an external drive and the cloud. Both should not be able to fail at the same time for the same reason.
1 copy somewhere else. Keep one copy away from your home or office: in the cloud or on a drive stored at another address (at your parents’ house, say). In a fire, flood or burglary, everything in one room is lost at once.

For an ordinary home user, 3-2-1 looks like this in practice: photos and documents on the computer (copy 1), copied to an external drive once a month (copy 2) and uploaded automatically to a cloud service (copy 3, somewhere else). If you cannot manage all three at once, start with at least one backup: a single backup is far better than none.

What to back up

You do not need to back up everything. Programs and the operating system can be reinstalled, but nobody can recreate your personal files for you. Your backup list should look roughly like this:

Documents. Work files, reports, your CV, your dissertation, contracts, spreadsheets and presentations.
Photos and videos. Often the most precious part, and the largest. Family weddings, your children’s first steps, celebrations.
Contacts. Phone numbers should be stored in your account (Google or iCloud) rather than only on the phone, so that they move to a new phone automatically.
Scans of important documents. Passport, ID card, diploma, certificates, medical records. A scan or a clear photo can be a real help when you need it. This is personal data, so keep it only in encrypted form (more on this below).
A password manager export. If you use a password manager, export its contents from time to time. Be careful: the export is often an ordinary unencrypted file, so put it straight into an encrypted archive and delete the unprotected copy.
Backup codes for two-step verification. If you do not have your phone to hand, these codes are the only way back into your account.
Special files for work or study. For example, an accountant’s bookkeeping database or a designer’s project files.

Tidying your files before you back them up makes the job much easier: if everything important lives in a few main folders, you only need to select those. We cover this in detail in our article on organising files and folders.

Backup methods: external drives and the cloud

External drive or USB flash drive

An external drive is a separate drive that connects by USB. A flash drive is handy for small documents, but an external drive is better for photos and videos. The advantages: no internet needed, large amounts of data are copied quickly, and the data stays in your hands. The drawbacks: the drive itself can fail or get lost, and it usually sits in the same room as the computer.

The simplest manual method:

On the external drive, create a folder called “Backup” and, inside it, a folder named after the date: for example, “2026-10”.
Copy your main folders (Documents, Pictures, Desktop) from the computer into it.
When copying has finished, open one or two files to check them.
Eject the drive safely (Safely Remove Hardware on Windows, Eject on macOS) and keep it somewhere separate from the computer.

Cloud storage

With cloud storage, your files are kept over the internet on the servers of the company providing the service. The most widely used are Google Drive (with a Google account), OneDrive (with a Microsoft account, built into Windows) and iCloud (for Apple devices). Each gives you a certain amount of space free of charge, with more space available on a paid basis; check the terms of the service yourself.

The advantage of the cloud is that your copy is automatically “somewhere else” and can be opened from any device. The drawbacks are dependence on the internet and account security: files in the cloud are only as safe as your account. Be sure to use a strong password and turn on two-step verification. You can read about choosing and using these services in our article on cloud storage.

Setting up automatic backups on a computer

Manual backups are good, but people forget. An automatic backup is set up once and then runs by itself.

Windows: File History

File History regularly saves copies of your files to an external drive and keeps older versions of each file as well.

Connect the external drive.
Type “Control Panel” in the Start menu, open it and go to File History.
If the drive is not detected automatically, choose it via Select drive.
Click Turn on.
Under Advanced settings, set how often copies are saved (every hour, for example) and how long older versions are kept.

To restore a file, click Restore personal files in the File History window, choose the date you need and click the green restore button. Another way is to right-click the file in its folder and view its previous versions.

Windows: OneDrive “Back up folders”

OneDrive can link your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders to the cloud:

Click the OneDrive cloud icon on the taskbar and choose Settings (the gear icon).
In the Sync and backup section, click Manage back up.
Switch on the folders you want and click Start backup.

From then on, new and changed files in those folders are uploaded to the cloud automatically. However, this method is really closer to syncing, and the section below explains why that matters.

macOS: Time Machine

Connect the external drive.
Open System Settings → General → Time Machine.
Click Add Backup Disk and choose the drive. Tick Encrypt Backup here as well and choose a password.
Time Machine then backs up to the drive automatically whenever it is connected.

To restore a file, open the relevant folder in Finder, choose Browse Time Machine Backups from the Time Machine icon in the menu bar, find the date and click Restore.

Backing up your phone and messaging apps

Android: Google One backup

Go to Settings → Google → Backup (on some phones, Settings → System → Backup).
Turn on Backup by Google One.
Tap Back up now to make the first backup straight away.

This backs up app data, call history, contacts, SMS messages and settings. For photos, check separately that backup is turned on in the Google Photos app.

iPhone: iCloud Backup

Open Settings → [your name] → iCloud → iCloud Backup.
Turn on Back Up This iPhone.
Connect to Wi-Fi and tap Back Up Now.

Backups then happen automatically while the phone is charging, locked and connected to Wi-Fi. Photos are managed separately under iCloud Photos.

WhatsApp and Telegram

WhatsApp chats are stored on the phone, so you need to turn on backup yourself: Settings → Chats → Chat backup. On Android the copy is saved to Google Drive, on iPhone to iCloud. Choose how often to back up (daily or weekly) and, if you wish, turn on end-to-end encrypted backup. If you do, do not lose the password or key, or the backup cannot be restored.

Telegram keeps ordinary chats in its own cloud, so they come back when you log in on a new phone. Secret chats, however, live only on the device and cannot be restored. If you want a separate copy of important conversations, files and photos, you can export them in Telegram Desktop on a computer via Settings → Advanced → Export Telegram data.

Syncing versus backing up: an important difference

Many people think: “My files are in Google Drive, so I have a backup.” But syncing and backing up are different things.

Syncing keeps the same files in the same state across several devices. Change a file on your computer and it changes in the cloud too. Delete a file and it is deleted from the cloud as well. If ransomware encrypts your files, the encrypted versions are uploaded to the cloud too.
A backup is a separate copy of how things were at a particular moment. If the original file is deleted or damaged, the backup stays unchanged and you restore from it.

A hypothetical example: Bekzod, who owns a small shop in Samarkand, keeps his accounts spreadsheets in a OneDrive folder. His assistant deletes a folder by mistake, thinking it holds “old files”. A few seconds later the folder disappears from OneDrive, and then from Bekzod’s home computer too. What saves him is the cloud service’s Recycle bin, where deleted files are kept for a certain period. Had nobody noticed the deletion, that period would have run out and the data would have been lost for good.

The lesson: cloud syncing is useful, but it should not be your only protection. Alongside it, keep a backup that stores versions (File History, Time Machine) or an external drive that you disconnect regularly.

Schedule, test restores and encryption

How often to back up

Ask yourself a simple question: “How many days’ work am I prepared to lose?” The answer sets your schedule. Some rough guidelines:

Work files you use every day: automatically, at least once a day (File History, Time Machine or the cloud).
Phone photos: automatically, whenever connected to Wi-Fi.
A full copy to an external drive: once a week or once a month. Set a repeating reminder on your phone, for example on the first Saturday of every month.
Scans of important documents and password manager exports: whenever they change, and at least once a year.
Before big events: always make an extra copy before taking the computer in for repair, reinstalling the system or moving to a new phone.

Test your restores

An untested backup is just a hope. Plenty of people believe they have a backup, only to find when they need it that it is empty, out of date or that they have forgotten the password. So every few months, run a small test:

Pick one document and one photo from the backup.
Restore them to a different folder (do not overwrite the original).
Open them: is the document complete, is the photo undamaged?
Check the date of the latest backup: is it as recent as you expected?
If the backup is encrypted, do you still remember the password, or is it written down somewhere safe?

Encryption and safe storage

Encryption turns data into a form that can only be read with a password or key. If an external drive is lost or stolen, a stranger cannot open an encrypted backup.

Windows. BitLocker To Go encrypts an external drive: right-click the drive in File Explorer and choose Turn on BitLocker. This feature is not available in every edition of Windows.
macOS. Tick Encrypt Backup in Time Machine.
For individual files. Use a free archiver such as 7-Zip to create a password-protected archive, choosing AES-256 as the encryption method.

Make your encryption password strong and keep it in a password manager or on paper in a safe place. An encrypted backup without its password is a box that cannot be opened. Also, disconnect the external drive once the backup has finished (ransomware can encrypt files on a connected drive too), and keep the backup drive away from damp, heat and small children. For more tips on account security, see our article on online safety, and for protection against malware, the article on updates and antivirus.

Common mistakes

Putting it off until later. People usually think about backups after they have lost data. Start today.
Treating syncing as a backup. A deleted or encrypted file is deleted or damaged in the synced copy too.
All copies in one place. If the computer and the backup drive sit on the same desk, a burglary or a flood takes both at once.
Leaving the backup drive permanently connected. Ransomware and power surges affect a connected drive as well.
Never testing a restore. You find out the backup does not work at the worst possible moment.
Forgetting the encryption password. An encrypted backup that cannot be opened is useless.
Turning off phone backup. Switching it off “to save space”, then losing everything when the phone goes missing.

Practical exercise and checklist

You can do this exercise over a single weekend.

Write down on paper: which data would you be most upset to lose? (photos, work files, document scans…)
Work out where each of them is stored right now: only on the phone, only on the computer, or in several places?
On your phone, check that Google One backup or iCloud Backup is turned on, and make a fresh copy with Back up now / Back Up Now.
Check that photo backup is turned on in Google Photos or iCloud Photos.
In WhatsApp, open Settings → Chats → Chat backup and look at the date of the last backup.
On your computer, set up File History (Windows) or Time Machine (macOS) to an external drive.
Scan your passport, diploma and other important documents, put them in a password-protected archive and keep the archive in two places.
Restore one file from the backup to a different folder and open it.
Set a monthly reminder on your phone: “Check the backup and copy to the external drive”.

Backup checklist

Important data exists in at least 3 copies, on 2 different types of storage, with 1 somewhere else.
Phone backup and photo backup are turned on.
Contacts are stored in your account.
Automatic backup is running on the computer, and the latest backup date is recent.
The external drive is disconnected after each backup and kept separately.
Encryption is turned on and the password is written down somewhere safe.
A restore has been tested within the last few months.
Your cloud account has a strong password and two-step verification turned on.

Backing up is not a one-off job but a small habit. Set it up once, check it once a month, and a failed drive or a lost phone becomes an unpleasant but fixable event. If your computer has slowed down, make a backup before you start cleaning it up too; we cover that in our article on speeding up your computer.

If you would like to learn to work with computers, files and the internet systematically with a teacher, take a look at our association’s free computer literacy programme and other training programmes. When you are ready, submit an application and our specialists will get in touch.