The 20-minute backup that saves your photos

Nearly every distressing call we get is the same call. The computer won't start, and the only copy of twenty years of photos was on it. Recovery is sometimes possible, often expensive, and never guaranteed.

Twenty minutes now avoids all of that.

1. Why this one is worth twenty minutes

The professional rule of thumb is called 3-2-1: three copies of anything you care about, on two different kinds of storage, with one of them somewhere else. That sounds like a lot until you translate it:

• The copy on your computer.
• A copy on an external drive in the drawer.
• A copy in the cloud.

That's it. The reason for the third one is simple: a drive in the drawer next to the computer doesn't survive a burglary, a flood or a house fire — and in Brisbane, flood is not a hypothetical.

2. What actually needs backing up

Not everything. Programs can be reinstalled and Windows can be reinstalled. What can't be replaced is:

• Photos and videos
• Documents, spreadsheets and tax records
• Anything scanned — certificates, wills, insurance papers
• Email, if you use a mail program rather than a browser
• Saved passwords, if they only live in one browser on one machine

On both Windows and Mac, that's mostly one folder — your user folder. Everything personal lives under it.

3. Option A: an external drive

Buy a drive at least twice the size of what you're backing up. Then use the tool that's already built into your computer, rather than dragging files by hand — dragging by hand is how things get missed.

On Windows: File History. Settings → System → Storage → Advanced storage settings → Backup options. Point it at the drive, choose how often, and leave it alone. (On Windows 10 it lives under Update & Security → Backup.)

On a Mac: Time Machine. System Settings → General → Time Machine → Add Backup Disk. Plug the drive in, say yes when it offers, done.

Both keep older versions of files, which matters more than people expect. It's what lets you go back to the version of a document from before you overwrote it.

4. Option B: the cloud

Cloud storage covers the "somewhere else" part of 3-2-1 without you having to remember anything. The three you probably already have access to:

• OneDrive — built into Windows, and included with Microsoft 365.
• iCloud — built into Mac and iPhone.
• Google Drive / Google Photos — works on everything.

Free tiers are small — usually 5GB, which a phone fills in a few months. Paid tiers are a few dollars a month for a terabyte, which is generally more than a household needs.

5. The trap: sync is not backup

This is the one that catches people, and it's worth reading twice.

Sync means your files are kept identical in two places. So if you delete a folder on your computer, sync faithfully deletes it in the cloud too. If ransomware encrypts your files, sync uploads the encrypted versions. Sync copies your mistakes as efficiently as it copies your work.

What saves you is version history — the ability to go back to how a file looked before. OneDrive, iCloud and Google Drive all keep deleted files and old versions for a limited window, typically around 30 days. It's genuinely useful, but it is a safety net with a time limit, not an archive.

Which is why the drive in the drawer still matters. Belt and braces.

6. Your phone photos

For most households, the photos that matter most are now on a phone rather than a computer. Check one setting today:

iPhone: Settings → your name → iCloud → Photos → make sure "Sync this iPhone" is on. If storage is full, it has quietly stopped — that's the most common failure we see.

Android: open Google Photos → tap your profile picture → check that Backup is on, and which account it's backing up to.

Then read section 5 again, because phone photo sync is sync. If you delete a photo on the phone, it goes from the cloud too. Once a year, copy the whole library onto the external drive as well.

7. Test it, or it isn't a backup

An untested backup is a hope, not a plan. The test takes two minutes:

1. Pick a file you'd genuinely miss.
2. Open your backup — the external drive, or the cloud website on a different device.
3. Find that file and open it.

If you can't find it, or it won't open, you've just learnt something extremely valuable at no cost. Do this once when you set the backup up, and once a year after that.

If you'd like a hand setting this up properly — or you're not sure whether what you've got is actually working — it's a straightforward job. Often it can be done remotely, and often within the first half hour.