Backups

Much has been written about why backups are so important, and better and worse jokes have been made about the curious fact that everyone knows this but no one seems to do it.

Backups vs. data hygiene

The biggest problem is often that we are not really aware of how much data we accumulate over the years and how important it still is to us. In our article on data hygiene, we advocate the credo of accumulating as little data as possible. But of course, this applies above all to data that is only of temporary use and would otherwise be forgotten in some corner - until it is rediscovered during a police raid.

As important as it is to store as little data as possible, we are all dependent in some way on the state and its institutions:

Official documents, health insurance, bank records, employment contracts, school records, and so on are all things that we may need from time to time to avoid sinking into complete poverty.

Perhaps even more important, however, are photos of our comrades and companions, letters from them, diaries, gifts, and other mementos. All of these are things that could cause immeasurable pain if they were suddenly gone.

Not everything listed above can be easily digitized, but most of it can.

We invite everyone to imagine that all the devices on which their passwords, photos and other personal data is stored are suddenly broken, go missing or are confiscated. Could you deal with that?

Data hygiene & backups go hand in hand

In the section above, we contrasted data hygiene with backups. Here, we would like to argue that both concepts should be considered together so that one benefits from the other.

Devices and accounts that have been used for many years, such as iCloud, Google Drive, WhatsApp, Signal etc., are often overflowing with ancient data that you don’t even know still exists.

How much data do you have on your devices that you haven’t deleted because you thought, “I might need it again someday”?

The amount of data that you have accumulated over the years is often far too extensive for you to quickly review and clean up.

However, if you had an encrypted backup of all your files, you could clean up your daily-use devices much more easily. Then, you would only carry around what you really need.

How To Backup?

We are currently working on a guide to backups for the “Instructions” category, which we will also link to below.

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