How to Back Up Your Data at Home

Photos from years past, documents, projects—most of us keep our entire digital lives in one place. This guide explains, how to make a backup at home so that a hard drive failure, a lost laptop, or a ransomware attack doesn’t mean losing everything.

Data can be lost in many ways: hardware fails, files are deleted by mistake, and malware can encrypt an entire computer. A good backup isn’t just a single storage device, but a well-thought-out system that runs automatically and doesn’t require you to constantly remember to do it.

The most common rule for copywriting is 3-2-1. This means three copies of important data, stored on two different media, one of which is kept off-site. This ensures that a failure of a single device—or even a fire or theft—will not cause you to lose all copies at once.

In practice, this might look like this: the original on your computer, a local copy on a NAS server or external drive, and a copy off-site—most often in the cloud. It’s a simple setup that effectively reduces the risk of data loss.

External hard drive It’s the easiest way to get started—just plug it in, copy the files, and unplug it. It works great as a quick local copy, but you have to remember to plug it in regularly, and it’s easy to lose or damage.

Cloud It implements the “off-premises” element, typically following the 3-2-1 rule—the copy is accessible from anywhere and resilient to local incidents. However, you are dependent on the service provider and your internet connection.

NAS server It’s a network device that acts as a private cloud at home: it automatically backs up data from multiple devices and shares files over the network. It’s a solution around which you can easily build an entire backup system—and we’ll devote most of our attention to it.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a small server with one or more hard drives connected to a home network. Synology devices run on DiskStation Manager (DSM), while QNAP devices run on QTS or QuTS hero. Both systems include apps for automatic backups from computers and phones.

Many NAS devices support RAID — combining several drives so that data is replicated across them. In the feed, you’ll encounter levels such as 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, or JBOD. It’s important to understand one thing: RAID protects against a single drive failure, but This does not replace a backup — It will not recover files that were accidentally deleted or encrypted by ransomware.

The table shows various device profiles. The Synology DS423 is a simple choice for anyone who wants to set up backups and forget about them—it supports a full range of RAID levels. The QNAP TS-264 and TS-464 stand out with more RAM out of the box, which makes it easier to run additional services.

If you’re planning to expand and handle multiple tasks at once, consider models with expandable memory, such as the Synology DS925+ (up to 32 GB). Where the manufacturer has not provided a value, the table shows “No data.”