How to back up all your devices

It’s perhaps the most often-repeated advice in computing: “back up your data!” Yet many of us simply don’t do it, or don’t do it as often as we should. That’s understandable: duplicating and archiving your data feels like a chore – and, most of the time, a pointless one at that. But as the saying goes, there are only two types of computer user: those who’ve lost data due to a system crash, and those who will. In these days of iPads and smartphones you can also lose important data by literally losing it – or having it stolen. If you haven’t kept a backup, your photos, messages, contacts and more may be gone for good.

Backing up your data will probably never be fun. But with the right tools and processes it can be largely automatic – which means there’s no excuse for not protecting your data. Sadly, there’s no single backup system that can protect all your devices in one go. But in this feature we’ll show you how to keep each of the devices in your home backed up with little or no effort, so that when a data disaster does strike you’ll be prepared.

Backup for PCs and laptops

For most of us, the Windows PC remains the main repository for documents and media, so if you only keep one thing backed up, it ought to be this. Probably the most fuss-free approach is to invest in a continuous cloud backup service.

Backing up to the cloud has several advantages over using your own physical media. Because your backup destination is physically remote, there’s no clutter in your home – no stacks of external hard disks or boxes full of DVDs. Your data is safe from physical hazards, such as burglary or fire, and so long as the backup service uses strong encryption and data protection practices your personal information will be more secure too, as thieves will be unable to read it. Best of all, you never need to worry about running out of space. Many services provide unlimited space at quite reasonable prices.

You can expect backing up a 100GB media folder to take more than three weeks of solid uploading

There are downsides to cloud backup, however. Clearly, you need a reliable internet connection: without one, you’re unprotected. The need for connectivity may also be a showstopper for laptop users who rarely connect to the internet, though we suspect those are a dying breed.

Even if you do have a constant connection, your first backup may take a very long time to complete. Domestic broadband rarely offers more than 1Mbit/sec upstream, so you can expect backing up a 100GB media folder to take more than three weeks of solid uploading – tying up your connection and leaving you only partly protected in the meantime.

The speed of uploads will remain a constant consideration if you work with large files, such as raw video footage. And of course if disaster does strike then recovering your files will be slow too: even with a fast 20Mbit/sec connection it will still take more than a day to download 100GB of data.

You should also consider the impact of uploading and downloading large amounts of data on any fair usage policy or transfer cap that may apply to your broadband subscription. If your backup software burns through your monthly data allowance in a matter of days, you could face a surcharge – or be left hobbling on a throttled line for the remainder of the month.

Local backups

For all of these reasons you may be tempted to handle your own local backups, as an alternative or complement to an online system. This may entail a certain up-front investment in hardware, since you’ll need enough space to store your backed up files, but in time you’ll probably end up saving money compared to using a monthly service: a half-terabyte USB hard disk can be had for as little as £40 if you shop around.

Setting up local backups needn’t be a complicated business. In fact, in Windows 7 (and some editions of Vista) you get some protection automatically. If you need to recover a file that you’ve accidentally overwritten or deleted, you can often do so using the built-in Previous Versions feature. To view older versions of a file, right-click on its icon and select Previous Versions: from here you can view, open and optionally restore old edits. To restore a deleted file, view the Previous Version of the containing folder.

Previous Versions isn’t a complete backup solution. It doesn’t track every change you make to a file – by default it updates only once a day, or when a System Restore point is created, so important changes may be missed. What’s more, the old version data always resides on the same drive as the current copy, so it provides no protection at all against disk failure, loss or theft.

Windows 7 and Vista users should therefore also consider using the built-in Backup and Restore agent to perform regular backups of your files – and indeed the whole system – to an external drive or network location. Or, if this doesn’t quite suit your needs, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Backup software is a regular feature on our cover disc, and external hard disks often come with their own backup clients, many of which promise constant, automatic backup of your personal files.

For the ultimate in effortless backup, Windows 8 brings a new feature called File Restore. In principle this works very similarly to Previous Versions, allowing you to rescue older versions of local files and folders. However, it uses an external or network drive, for greater data security. And it makes copies much more frequently: by default, updated files are archived every hour, but you can increase frequency all the way up to every ten minutes. Accessing the old contents of a folder is as simple as clicking the History button in the Home section of the Explorer ribbon.

Backing up multiple systems

So far we’ve focused on keeping local backups for a single PC. If you have multiple PCs to protect it probably doesn’t make sense to invest in a separate external drive for each of your computers. It’s more efficient to set up a central backup location.

The simplest way to set this up is by sharing a drive across your network. Home editions of Windows 7 don’t let you back up to a network location, but there are plenty of third-party packages that will. And if you’re moving up to Windows 8, its File Restore feature makes it easy to set a shared drive as a backup location for your entire Homegroup.

The downside to backing up to a shared drive is that the computer hosting it must be kept switched on all the time, or backups won’t be made. This isn’t exactly energy-efficient, and it creates extra problems should something go wrong with the host computer. A safer approach is to invest in a dedicated low-power network storage device. Until recently we might have recommended an appliance based on the Windows Home Server operating system; but Microsoft confirmed in July 2012 that its home-oriented server OS is no longer under development, so we’d be hesitant to invest in it at this point.

Instead, we recommend taking a look at some of the simpler network-attached storage (NAS) devices that are out there. For example, the A-listed Synology DS212j offers a friendly Windows-like interface, with some nice extras such as the ability to mount ISOs as network volumes and to stream audio over your local network. It also supports RAID mirroring, so you can be confident a hardware failure won’t mean losing any data – which is, after all, what it’s all about.

Mixing PCs and Macs

If you own a Mac as well as a PC you may well be using Apple’s Time Machine system to handle backups. Most people do this via an external drive connected directly to the Mac – but if you prefer, you can use a shared network drive. The easiest way to achieve this is to invest in one of Apple’s dedicated Time Capsule boxes. This will work automatically with Time Machine – and it can be simultaneously mounted on Windows clients for use as a backup destination. If your Time Capsule isn’t visible from your Windows PC, check out these instructions on getting it working.

The potential downside of this is that Time Capsules are quite sophisticated by NAS standards, featuring 802.11n and a USB socket for sharing printers and secondary drives. This makes them fairly expensive, with prices starting at £249 for a 2TB unit. Annoyingly, Apple doesn’t officially support saving Time Machine backups to generic NAS devices, or shared Windows volume. But there are workarounds if you don’t mind a bit of technical hackery. You’ll find one guide here: note that the process involves changing system settings and isn’t guaranteed to work with all devices, nor with Mountain Lion. Proceed at your own risk!

iPhones and iPads

When it comes to mobile devices, backing up isn’t hard to do – but the details vary considerably depending on what sort of hardware you have. If you’re using an iOS device – that is, an iPhone or iPad – backup is built into the system. By default iTunes automatically backs up all of the data on these devices, including purchased music and shows, messages, application data and device settings, each time you sync.

There are some caveats. For one, only the most recent state of your device is stored. If you want to backup your backups, as it were, you’ll have to manually copy them out of the default location. In Windows 7 this is C:Users[your username]AppDataRoamingApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup. What’s more, the information is stored in a proprietary format, so you can’t just go trawling through your files on your PC. Restoring it to your iPhone or iPad is simplicity itself, however: simply right-click on the device in iTunes and select Restore from the context menu.

If you’re using iCloud, iTunes backups are disabled, and your data is instead backed up automatically once a day to your iCloud account – so long as your device is powered and connected to the internet via Wi-Fi. You’ll find options to turn on iCloud, and force manual backups, by opening the Settings app and tapping iCloud | Storage & Backup. Free cloud storage is limited to 5GB, so you may want to exclude some applications from backing up their data – you’ll find the options for this under Settings | iCloud | Storage & Backup | Manage Storage.

If you need to restore from iCloud, you can do so by completely erasing your device (go to Settings | General | Reset | Erase All Content and Settings). The next time you restart you’ll be prompted to restore from an iCloud backup.

Android and Windows Phone

For Android users, if you opt in to allow it then Google automatically keeps a central copy of your contacts, bookmarks, dictionaries and some other settings. This can be restored to a new phone or tablet simply by logging in to your Google account for the first time, taking much of the pain out of replacing or upgrading hardware. You can control what syncs by going to Settings | Accounts & sync on your Android device, then clicking on your Google account (the lower-case “g” in a blue square).

However, there are plenty of things Google doesn’t back up, such as downloaded files, application settings and SMS messages. If you want to safeguard these, you’ll need a third-party application. One of the most popular choices is MyBackup Pro. The app costs a princely £3.22, but it lets you backup more or less every file and setting on your phone, either to local storage or to the company’s own online servers. Backups can be run manually or to a schedule, and a new experimental feature lets you trigger a backup remotely, so if your phone is lost or stolen you may still be able to grab a copy of its contents.

Of course, My Backup Pro isn’t the only backup software for Android. If you’ve “rooted” your device – that is, broken the operating system’s built-in protections – you may want to check out the free Titanium Backup app, again available from Google Play. This is a comprehensive backup tool, with support for advanced features such as encrypted backups, multi-user support and automatic uploading to online services including Dropbox and Google Drive. If you don’t have a rooted phone or tablet, however, it won’t work at all.

What about those using Windows Phone? The Zune software will back up your settings and media when you sync with your primary PC or Mac, just like Apple’s automatic iTunes backups. But there’s no officially supported way to perform a full backup that includes your message history and application data.

There are, however, third-party tools that can help. The unauthorised Windows Phone 7 Backup application lets you make a complete copy of your phone’s data and OS, ready to restore at a later date. You get absolutely no guarantee it’ll work, though – and even if it does it’s an all-or-nothing operation, with no way to selectively restore some types of data while skipping others. In other words, you’re protected against disaster or loss (as long as you replace your lost phone with an identical model, as backups aren’t guaranteed to work across different hardware) – but not if you recklessly overwrite a data file and later wish you hadn’t. If you’re feeling bold and want to take the plunge, you’ll find more details and download links in this forum post.