Automatic Backups on Your Home Network

Backups nearly always fail for the same reason: they depend on someone remembering. The pattern repeats everywhere, an external drive in a drawer, used three times in the first month and never again. When the laptop finally dies, the newest copy is eight months old.

A home network fixes that part. If the destination is always on and always connected, backups can run by themselves with nothing to remember.

A simple rule that's enough

The old guideline still holds: three copies, two different media, one off-site. For an ordinary home that means roughly:

• The originals on your laptop and phone.
• One automatic copy to storage at home, such as a NAS or a drive attached to the router.
• One copy away from home, either cloud or a drive kept elsewhere.

The off-site part is the one usually skipped, yet it's what protects against fire, flood, and theft. Copies that all live in one house disappear together in the same event.

Choosing where to store it at home

Three sensible options, simplest first:

• A USB drive on the router. Many routers have a USB port and can share a drive as a network folder. Cheap, slow, and enough for documents and photos.
• A small two-bay NAS. The most comfortable option: always on, with its own backup apps for Windows, macOS, and phones. What to weigh up is in choosing network storage.
• An old computer turned into a server. Free if you already have one, but it needs maintenance and draws more power (power costs of network gear).

Whichever you pick, connect it by cable, not Wi-Fi. The first backup is usually tens to hundreds of gigabytes, and over Wi-Fi that can take a whole night while making the network feel heavy for everyone. See choosing LAN cable.

Making it run by itself

Every system already has the tool, and no extra app is needed:

• Windows: File History or the built-in backup, pointed at the NAS network folder.
• macOS: Time Machine, designed for network destinations and running hourly.
• Phones: automatic photo upload, to either a NAS app or a cloud service. This matters most for most people, because photos are the least replaceable data there is.

Schedule it for sleeping hours so it doesn't compete with daytime use. If your router supports priority settings, lower the priority of backup traffic so it doesn't disturb video calls (setting bandwidth priority).

The off-site copy, and why sync isn't backup

This is the most expensive misunderstanding. Sync services copy changes to every device, including changes you didn't want. A file deleted on the laptop is deleted in the cloud. A file encrypted by ransomware is copied up in its encrypted state.

Sync only becomes backup when the service keeps old versions and you know how to bring them back. Check two things in the service you use: how long old versions are kept, and where the restore button is. If it doesn't keep versions, pair it with a separate drive taken to a relative's house now and then.

The first cloud upload will occupy your upstream for days, and upstream is usually far smaller than downstream. Why is in why upload is slower than download. Let it run overnight and don't judge it by the first day.

Keeping the backup safe

Backup storage holds a complete copy of everything important, which makes it an attractive target. A few things not to skip:

• Change the NAS default password and don't expose it to the internet unless you truly need to. If you do, use a VPN rather than port forwarding (port forwarding explains the risk).
• Turn on encryption for backup drives, especially ones that leave the house.
• Update firmware on the NAS and router regularly (updating router firmware).
• Keep one copy that isn't always connected. Ransomware erases everything it can reach, and an unplugged drive is out of reach.

The most forgotten part

A backup that has never been restored is of unknown status, not safe. Every few months, take one random file from last month's backup, open it, and confirm the contents are right. The check takes two minutes and is the only way to know the whole chain actually works.

Check the notifications too. Many backup systems stop quietly when the disk fills or the network folder moves, and nobody finds out until the data is needed.

Frequently asked questions