How to back up your family history so you never lose it

Follow the 3-2-1 rule

The standard archivists use is simple: 3 copies of anything you care about, on 2 different kinds of storage, with 1 copy kept somewhere else. For a family, that might be: the live copy on your archive, a copy on an external drive at home, and a copy offsite (a relative’s house or encrypted cloud). If any one fails, you’re still safe.

Keep the originals, in open formats

Back up the original photo and document files, not just screenshots or compressed versions. Stick to widely supported, long-lived formats — JPEG/PNG for images, PDF for documents, MP3/WAV/M4A for audio. Avoid anything that can only be opened by one app or one company’s website.

Beware the “one account” trap

Storing everything in a single subscription service feels safe until the bill lapses, the terms change, or the company shuts the product down. If losing access to one account would lose your family’s history, that’s not a backup — it’s a single point of failure. Make sure you can always export everything and that the export is genuinely usable on its own.

Make restoring easy — and test it

A backup you’ve never restored is a guess. At least once, actually open a backup and confirm the photos and files are really there. Automated daily backups are ideal, because the backup that saves you is the one that happened without anyone remembering to run it.