How do you actually back up your data in 2026 - the 3-2-1 rule applied

[Dave_37]

Most people's backup strategy is 'it is probably fine' until something goes wrong. The 3-2-1 rule remains the sensible baseline: 3 copies of data, on 2 different storage types, with 1 offsite. In 2026 the options are better than ever but most people still rely on one cloud provider and think that is sufficient. What are people actually running for personal backup and what would you recommend to someone who wants to sort this properly without spending a fortune

[SortedBuilder]

Synology NAS running Hyper Backup to a local drive and replicating to Backblaze B2 cloud storage. The NAS gives you a fast local restore and the B2 offsite gives you disaster recovery. Initial setup takes an afternoon but maintenance is essentially zero

[Mason0]

Time Machine to an external SSD for daily local backups, Backblaze Personal Backup for continuous offsite at 9 dollars a month, and an annual clone of the full drive to a separate drive kept at a family member's house. That is true 3-2-1 and the annual clone is the step most people skip

[Pilgrim]

Rclone to encrypt and sync to multiple cloud providers simultaneously. Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox all at once. Free tiers cover most personal data and if one provider goes down or changes their pricing you have two others. The encryption means you are not dependent on their privacy policies

[WWFRoss95]

The most common failure point is not the backup system - it is testing the restore. People set up a backup and never verify that they can actually get their files back. Run a restore test at least once a year on a specific set of files you know you cannot lose

[Brett42]

For photos specifically: Lightroom cloud sync, a local copy on an external SSD and an annual export of everything to a second external drive. Photos are the irreplaceable data for most families and deserve a dedicated backup strategy separate from documents

[ParallelSelf90]

The honest answer for most non-technical people: iCloud or Google Photos for photos, an external hard drive plugged in once a week for documents, and Backblaze for everything else. That covers 95% of real data loss scenarios for about ten pounds a month