LMC Tech
Problem solved
A file in two places on the same machine is not a backup.
Most people discover their backup strategy was imaginary on the worst possible day. The rule that prevents it is genuinely simple.
The problem
Why most backups turn out not to exist
The laptop will not turn on, or the ransomware note has appeared, and someone is now asking where the photos from the last nine years live.
- Copying files into another folder on the same drive protects you from deleting a file by accident, and from nothing else. Drive dies, both copies die.
- Sync is not backup either. Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive faithfully replicate your mistakes: delete a file, or encrypt it with ransomware, and it dutifully syncs that everywhere. Versioning helps, but only within a limited window.
- An external drive permanently plugged in is vulnerable to the same power surge, the same theft, the same flood, and the same ransomware as the machine it is attached to.
- The classic answer is 3-2-1: three copies, on two different types of media, one of them off-site. It sounds bureaucratic. It is really just 'do not let one bad event reach everything'.
The fix
A version that people actually stick to
Cheapest and most effective first. A surprising amount of this costs nothing at all, which is not what most sites selling you things will tell you.
- Copy one: the files on your machine.
- Copy two: an external drive you plug in weekly, then unplug. Unplugging is the important half.
- Copy three: cloud backup, which handles the off-site requirement without you driving anywhere. Backup, not just sync.
- Test it. Restore one file, once, deliberately. An untested backup is a hope, not a plan. This is the step everyone skips and it is the step that catches the broken ones.
- For a household with lots of photos or a small business, a NAS with two drives mirrored gives you a proper local copy, plus most will push a copy to the cloud automatically.
- Whatever you choose, automate it. Anything relying on you remembering monthly will fail within a year.
Refurbished
Never buy used storage
Buying used is often the best value in tech, and occasionally a terrible idea. Which one it is depends entirely on the category.
Amazon Resale store- This is the one category where refurbished is a bad idea. Drives wear, that wear is invisible from the outside, and the entire point of the purchase is reliability.
- Buy drives new, with a warranty. If budget is tight, buy a smaller new drive rather than a bigger used one.
- A NAS enclosure itself, being mostly a small computer with no moving parts other than fans, is more reasonable used. Put new drives in it.
Honesty note
How to actually find refurbished stock.
Worth knowing, because it is not obvious and we checked: you cannot filter an Amazon search to refurbished items from a link. We tried every documented approach and each one quietly returned ordinary new products instead.
The used and refurbished offers live on the individual product page, under the buying box, as "Other sellers" or "Used" options. Find the item you want first, then look there. The Amazon Resale storefront above is the other way in.
Who is telling you this
We fix this sort of thing for a living.
LMC Tech builds websites, software platforms and AI-readiness work, and supports the technology behind them. These pages exist because we answer the same questions repeatedly, and writing them down is quicker than repeating ourselves.
- Our work and portfolio, including Time Out Recovery, Echo Moon Western and LODORi.
- Web and software development: Django platforms and custom builds.
- IT support: the day job behind these opinions.
- Talk to us about business backup.
- All the problems we have written up.
Rather not do it yourself?
We can just sort it.
Across Lincolnshire and remotely. If you would rather someone specified it, fitted it and made sure it works, that is the day job.