Backing up files

Do it… or don’t come crying to us when you lose all your cat photos

Hard-drive clicks of doom… lost phones… devices dying rather than booting up… as Craig Grannell explains, all these will be just minor inconveniences if your data is safe

THE BASICS

■ Plug and play

If you have a modern Mac or Windows PC, you’ve no excuse for not backing up data. Buy a mobile USB hard drive or SSD with at least the capacity of your computer’s internal drive and plug it in. Immediately, your OS should ask whether you want to start backing up files, protecting you in the event of disaster.

■ Make local copies

Backing up local files is a must, but a lot of what we do today happens online. Much of that is ephemeral – do you really want to back up your entire Twitter history? – but for more important output (vital work on Google Docs, prized blog posts), save copies to your PC/MAC just in case the cloud eats what’s online.

■ Don’t rely on paper

Paper documents are rarer than they once were and we don’t think of them as data to back up – but we should. If you get an important tax document in the post, you won’t want to lose it – and yet misplacing such things is easy. So get into the routine of scanning these papers to a mobile device or computer as soon as they land.

■ Back up your backups

Whichever systems you use, you need failsafes. Got local backups? Great – unless someone steals your hardware. Think you live in the future and should only back up to the cloud? Fine – until your online backup corrupts and becomes useless. For important data, especially the likes of photos, you need multiple backups, not just one.

■ Create breakpoints

When you do a major OS upgrade (which for many people happens annually), make your first backup with it to a new drive. Then label the old one and stick it in a drawer for safekeeping. This keeps your current backup drive fresh and builds a collection of older documents frozen in time that you can access later if you need to.

MOBILE MUSTS

■ Use icloud

For iphone/ipad, tap your name in Settings; in icloud > icloud Backup, turn the backup on. If you need more storage, pay for it – the free 5GB isn’t much. You can prune what’s backed up in icloud > Manage Storage > Backup.

■ Save Android files

‘Backup & restore’ (or similar) is found in the Settings app (search if you need to). This backs up your apps, configs, non-google app data, network passwords and more. Also use Android File Transfer (Mac/windows) for manual backups of documents.

PHOTO FILERS

■ Try Google One

Google One is ideal for backing up pics and videos on Android. It’s a paid service – but the free 15GB Google provides elsewhere won’t last long with photos. Note that you can invite family members to your plan so you can all use it.

■ Fire up icloud Photos

On Apple devices, icloud Photos does the same job. Turn it on and all your photos and videos will sit on Apple’s servers; you can choose which devices also store full-quality originals. Lose your iphone and your photos will now be safe.

APPLE ASSISTANCE

■ Extract media

Connect your Apple device to your PC or Mac and launch imazing (see right). Click on Music and you’ll see all the tunes on your handset; any items you select can be exported to a folder.

■ Manage apps

In imazing you can see all the apps/games you’ve installed; right-click and you can extract them to your PC or Mac, to later reinstall – even if they’ve been removed from the App Store. Use Manage Apps to download/restore app data.

■ Double up

You should be doing icloud backups and can also back up to Finder (Mac) and itunes (Windows). imazing provides an alternative/additional option, and its backups (which can be wireless) are easily restorable and browsable.

SITE SAVERS

■ Save to PDF

Not all online services offer export options. Should you want to save something you post (or any other article), every modern mobile and desktop OS lets you export, save or print to PDF, which nets you the text and images.

■ Try scrolling grabs

Some mobile devices offer scrolling screenshots that preserve layouts: Scroll Capture on Samsung phones, Scrollshots on Huawei, Full Page for screenshots on iphone/ipad. Just be aware that, while Apple exports to PDF, most save as flat images.