Backup Strategy

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The time around the holidays is also a time of backups for me. I’ve automated my most important backup mechanisms. Still I keep some manual backup routines that are hard to automate and I don’t want to spent too much time with. So I execute them once or twice a year and one time is always between the years. This post shares my whole backup strategy.

TLDR;

  • Automatic: Mobile device image upload to OneDrive
  • Automatic: Encrypted upload of documents folder to OneDrive (script)
  • Manual: Download documents from all banks I have accounts/depots at
  • Manual: Download Contacts and Calendar
  • Manual: Backup my OneDrive content on a otherwise disconnected and encrypted hard-drive
  • Manual: Password manager content backup

Prerequisites

The services I use to store/sync my data define my main prerequisites:

  • A Mailprovider for Contacts and Calendar sync.
  • 1Password for passwords sync. I am very glad to have switched from LastPass a year ago or so, since the latest Incident at LastPass seems to be quite concerning…
  • OneDrive for files (not too important files though) and mobile image backup
  • Windows/Android as OS
  • I keep my important documents in the documents folder on my laptop

Automatic Backups

Most of my backups happen automatically since they would be too time consuming otherwise, if executed regularly. My current backup setup is:

  • Automatic image backup using the OneDrive image upload functionality. As soon as my mobile device has WLAN connection it will backup the images.
  • This script will automatically encrypt the content of my documents folder and upload to OneDrive. The upload executes weekly, once my laptop has a power supply plugged in and doesn’t have a lot to do.

Manual Backups (1-2x per year)

The steps executed vary a bit. A while ago I used to backup my whole laptop drive and most folders on my phone. But recently I realized that the backup should be limited to what is essential and cannot be redownloaded from the web anyway. The point I definitely have to figure out yet is how to backup the content of my password manager (1password). I used to keep also a printed list of all contents, but that seemed to defy the purpose of a pw-manager a bit. This year I will go with downloading the content of my pw manager to an encrypted folder inside my encrypted hard-drive. All manual steps this year:

  • Manual: contacts and calendar backup to local documents folder
  • Manual: download all documents I received from banks this year
  • Manual: password-manager content backup
  • Manual: backup the whole content of my OneDrive on the external hard-drive

The end

That’s all for now. It doesn’t take me too much time doing the backup once or twice a year, considered the amount of time and problems I potentially could safe if shit hits the fan. I should add that I don’t keep a lot of paper if it’s not necessary (legal requirements or so). So I kind of depend on that data not being lost forever. What about you? I hope you get some value out of the post and would love to hear about your backup strategy or suggestions!

That being said, have a good start into 2023! 🎉

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