Backups & Security

A Complete Backup Audit Checklist for Home and Business
A Complete Backup Audit Checklist for Home and Business
This is the audit that tells you whether everything else in this category is actually working. Run it once thoroughly, then annually. Set aside ninety minutes for the full version.... Read more...
How to Protect Your Files From Accidental Deletion
How to Protect Your Files From Accidental Deletion
Hardware failure gets the attention, and accidental deletion causes more loss. A folder dragged into another folder. A sync client "cleaning up." A bulk selection that included one more item... Read more...
What Happens to Your Digital Accounts When You Die
What Happens to Your Digital Accounts When You Die
When someone dies, their family typically inherits their possessions and cannot reach their accounts. Photos, email, business systems, subscriptions, cryptocurrency — all technically theirs, all behind authentication designed specifically to... Read more...
How to Back Up Your Website and Online Business Data
How to Back Up Your Website and Online Business Data
An online business lives in places you don't own. The website is on a host, the shop is on a platform, the customer list is in an email service, the... Read more...
Offsite Backups for People Who Don't Trust the Cloud
Offsite Backups for People Who Don't Trust the Cloud
Off-site is the hardest part of 3-2-1, and the cloud is the easy answer to it. For people who'd rather not put their data on someone else's servers — whether... Read more...
How to Do a Yearly Security Checkup on Your Accounts
How to Do a Yearly Security Checkup on Your Accounts
Security isn't a state you reach, it's a thing that drifts. Passwords get reused under pressure, apps get connected and forgotten, recovery phone numbers go out of date, and accounts... Read more...
How to Spot a Phishing Email Before You Click
How to Spot a Phishing Email Before You Click
Most advice about phishing is out of date. It tells you to look for bad spelling, poor formatting, and generic greetings. Modern phishing has none of those — the messages... Read more...
How to Securely Delete Files You Don't Want Recovered
How to Securely Delete Files You Don't Want Recovered
Deleting a file doesn't remove it. It removes the pointer to it — the entry in the index that says where the data lives. The data itself stays on the... Read more...
How to Encrypt Sensitive Files on Any Device
How to Encrypt Sensitive Files on Any Device
Encryption converts your files into something unreadable without a key. It sounds technical, and at the level most people need, it's a checkbox and a password. The useful thing is... Read more...
Two-Factor Authentication Explained, and Which Type Is Safest
Two-Factor Authentication Explained, and Which Type Is Safest
Two-factor authentication means proving who you are with two different things: something you know (a password) plus something you have (a phone, a key) or something you are (a fingerprint).... Read more...
Password Managers: How to Set One Up and Actually Use It
Password Managers: How to Set One Up and Actually Use It
A password manager is the single highest-return security change most people can make. It's more effective than antivirus, more effective than any setting you can toggle, and it takes an... Read more...
Ransomware and Your Files: How Not to Lose Everything
Ransomware and Your Files: How Not to Lose Everything
Ransomware encrypts your files and demands payment for the key. It's the one threat that specifically defeats the backup arrangement most people have, because it reaches everything your computer can... Read more...
How to Back Up Your Phone Completely
How to Back Up Your Phone Completely
Your phone holds more irreplaceable data than your computer. The photos, the messages, the notes written at 2am, the record of where you've been and who you talked to. It's... Read more...
What to Do the Day Your Hard Drive Dies
What to Do the Day Your Hard Drive Dies
If your drive is failing right now, read this section and act. The rest of the article can wait. Stop using it. Power it down. Do not run repair tools.... Read more...
Backup vs Archive vs Sync: Know the Difference
Backup vs Archive vs Sync: Know the Difference
These three words get used interchangeably, and the confusion is expensive. Each is a distinct tool with a distinct job, and substituting one for another produces a specific and predictable... Read more...
How to Test Your Backup (Most People Never Do)
How to Test Your Backup (Most People Never Do)
An untested backup isn't a backup. It's a belief about a backup, and the two feel identical right up until the moment they don't. This isn't hypothetical caution. Backup failures... Read more...
How to Choose an External Hard Drive for Backups
How to Choose an External Hard Drive for Backups
Backup drives are a low-stakes purchase that people overthink in the wrong direction. The specifications that get compared — transfer speeds, brand rankings, cache sizes — barely matter for backup.... Read more...
Time Machine vs File History: Backing Up Mac and Windows
Time Machine vs File History: Backing Up Mac and Windows
Both major operating systems include free backup software. Both are good enough for most people, and both have specific limitations worth knowing before you rely on them. They're also not... Read more...
How to Set Up an Automatic Backup in Under an Hour
How to Set Up an Automatic Backup in Under an Hour
The reason most people don't have a backup isn't cost or complexity. It's that the task has no obvious first step, so it stays on the list indefinitely. Here's the... Read more...
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule Explained and How to Actually Do It
The 3-2-1 Backup Rule Explained and How to Actually Do It
The 3-2-1 rule is the closest thing data protection has to a universal standard, and it's usually explained as a slogan rather than a system. Here's what each number is... Read more...