5 Cheap(ish) Things for Backing Up and Protecting Your Stuff

On a nostalgia trip a few months back, I opened up the Photos app on my computer to look at pictures from my high school production of Jesus Christ Superstar. But I didn’t have them—I scrolled all the way to the earliest photos and was surprised to find that the first ones I had were from college, a few years later. That’s when I remembered that my laptop’s hard drive had crashed in college. Those photos from the musical, and everything else up until my senior year, were gone for good.

Had I backed up my computer in some way, that lost hard drive would’ve been an inconvenience but not a loss of memories. If you’ve ever lost photos, documents, or your music library, you also know just how fleeting your digital life can be. The same can be true of irreplaceable physical goods.

Taking a few steps to protect your digital and physical belongings now can mean that, even in a terrible situation, you won’t lose the things that have sentimental or material value. And it’s easier (and cheaper) than you might think. In collaboration with Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews and recommends products, here are five cheap(ish) things that’ll protect your digital and physical files.

External hard drive

An external hard drive can save regular, time-stamped backups of your entire hard drive. Even if you have an online backup service, such as iCloud, keeping a local copy means you don’t need to worry about having an Internet connection, and you don’t have to worry about a cloud-server failure. As we explain in Wirecutter’s guide to backing up your computer, both Macs and Windows PCs have free, built-in backup software, which makes the process passive and pretty painless. Take 15 minutes to set it up, and then your computer will automatically archive your files on a regular schedule as long as you have the drive connected. You can restore the computer’s entire contents in the event of a catastrophe, or any individual files as needed. The 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim USB hard drive is Wirecutter’s top pick for backing up all your files locally. It’s reliable, thin, and fast; you can easily take it with you on the go, and most people don’t need more than 2 TB of storage.

Cloud backup

Turning to an onsite backup is the easiest and fastest way to restore your files, but if a disaster such as a fire or a flood occurs, you might lose both your computer and your external hard drive. That’s why it’s important to back up online as well. Dropbox and Google Drive can help sync your files, but you shouldn’t use them for sensitive documents because they lack a private encryption key. For $60 a year, Wirecutter’s recommendation, Backblaze, will securely copy your computer’s contents to the cloud, with no storage limits. From there you can download files as needed from the Web, or even have a USB drive containing all your data mailed to you.

Password manager

In addition to backing up your files, it’s important to secure your digital identity, namely by using strong, unique passwords everywhere you log in on the Web. 1Password is Wirecutter’s favorite password manager. It holds all your passwords in an encrypted database, and you can use a browser extension to automatically fill them in. The software works across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, so you’ll have access to your passwords on pretty much any phone or computer. It even includes 1 GB of secure file storage for your most important documents.

Fireproof document safe

Even if most of your important documents are digitized on your computer, there are still important physical items worth protecting—think birth certificates and passports, or cash and jewelry. A document safe can protect them from damage in the event of a fire or flood, in addition to keeping them out of the hands of thieves. Wirecutter recommends the Honeywell 1104. While it’s heavier and larger than safes with comparable storage volume, the Honeywell is independently rated to last longer, in hotter fires; it’s also waterproof.

Paper shredder

Once you’ve scanned important documents to your phone or computer, keep your personal information safe by destroying the physical copies. Wirecutter likes the AmazonBasics 15-Sheet Cross-Cut Shredder and 12-Sheet Micro-Cut Shredder. The former is a better option if you have a lot of shredding to get through, as it handles more pages at once; the latter cuts paper into nearly-impossible-to-reassemble squares, creating a confusion of confetti that should confound even the most committed crook.