A backup strategy for freelancers: the 3-2-1 checklist

Keep three copies of your client work on two kinds of storage, one of them away from your desk: the files on your computer, an external drive that Time Machine (Mac) or File History (Windows) updates without you, and a cloud backup app such as Backblaze Personal Backup at $99 a year. Then cover the few things a computer backup misses, and restore a file every quarter to prove it all works. The checklist at the end puts the whole plan on a schedule.

The 3-2-1 rule for a studio of one

CISA, the US government’s cybersecurity agency, gives small businesses the rule in its backup guidance: three copies of important files, on two different types of storage, with one copy off site. For a studio of one, the three copies look like this.

Copy	Where it lives	What keeps it current	What it costs
The working copy	Your computer’s internal drive	You, as you work	Nothing extra
The desk backup	An external drive, at least twice your computer’s space	Time Machine or File History, on its own	The drive, once; the software is built in
The off-site copy	A backup service’s servers	A backup app running in the background	$99 a year for Backblaze, one computer

The desk drive covers the common failures (a dead internal drive, a folder deleted by mistake, a file saved over) and is the fastest way back to work. The cloud copy covers whatever takes the desk with it: a break-in, a fire, a burst pipe. If your studio is a room at home, off site means out of the house. CISA also asks that backups run automatically and let you roll your data back at least seven days; keep that in mind for the section on sync.

An automatic backup on your desk

Both operating systems include the software; you supply a drive that holds nothing else. Apple suggests a drive with at least twice the storage of the computer it backs up, so a laptop with 1TB inside wants a 2TB drive or larger, and the same sizing works on Windows.

On a Mac: Time Machine

1. Connect the drive, open System Settings, click General in the sidebar, then click Time Machine.
2. Click Add Backup Disk, choose the drive and click Set Up Disk.
3. Turn on Encrypt Backup, and keep the password in your password manager: you need it to restore anything.

Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups before that, and deletes the oldest when the drive fills up.

On Windows: File History

1. Connect the drive, open Control Panel and go to System and Security.
2. Select Save backup copies of your files with File History, then select Turn on.

File History backs up your libraries (Documents, Pictures, Videos and Music) and your desktop. A client folder kept anywhere else, such as C:\Studio, is skipped until you add it to a library. The separate Windows Backup app syncs the folders you choose to OneDrive, which is sync, with the problems covered below.

On a laptop, either backup runs only while the drive is connected, so plug it in whenever you sit down at the desk.

A copy off site, in the cloud

A cloud backup app copies everything on the computer to the service’s servers, then keeps copying the changes as you work. Backblaze Personal Backup, the pick in the hardware group of our Tools page, costs $99 a year for one computer and backs up its internal drive and the external drives connected to it, with no data limit. Two details matter for a studio:

• Version history. By default, Backblaze keeps changed and deleted files for 30 days. You can extend that to a year, or keep them forever for an added fee.
• External drives. On the default history, reconnect each external drive at least once every 30 days, or Backblaze may remove that drive’s backed-up data. The longer histories lift that limit.

The first upload of years of photos or video takes a long time, so leave the computer awake until it finishes. If your connection can’t keep up with the size of your files, the older method also meets the rule: two drives, one on the desk and one kept at another address, swapped every week or two, as long as you really swap them.

Why sync is not a backup

Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive and OneDrive keep the same files on every device. That makes them good for sharing with clients and poor as backups, because they copy mistakes as faithfully as work.

• Deletions spread. Delete a folder on the laptop and it leaves every device. Dropbox keeps deleted files for 30 days on its Basic and Plus plans, and Google Drive deletes files in its trash forever after 30 days.
• Bad saves spread. A damaged file, an accidental overwrite or files encrypted by ransomware replace the clean copies. Google Drive may delete an uploaded file’s older versions after 30 days, or once there are 100 newer ones.
• Online-only files are not on your disk, so no backup app can copy them. Set the folders that hold client work to be available offline.
• The account is a single point of failure. If it is locked or taken over, the copy that was meant to be safe is the one you can’t reach.

Keep sync for what it does well, and don’t count it as one of your three copies. A backup takes you back to last Tuesday; sync gives you now, everywhere.

Client archives, and how long to keep them

Archive a project the day its final invoice is paid, in one folder per project inside one folder per client:

• the final files exactly as delivered, and the native working files with their linked images;
• exports that open without the app they were made in, such as PDF, TIFF, PNG or SVG;
• the brief, proposal, contract, change requests, invoices and the email in which the client approved the work;
• a note of the fonts and stock images used, with their license receipts.

The exports still open if you ever cancel Creative Cloud; our guide to Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives covers which other apps open the native files.

How long to keep them

No law sets one period for creative files, so two clocks decide it. The first is what you told the client. Put your retention period in your contract, beside the clause on when the files and rights pass to the client (the contract in The Studio Kit covers that handover), and keep to it.

The second is tax. Invoices, receipts and contracts are business records, and the IRS says to keep records for three years in most cases, six if you leave out more than a quarter of the income you should have reported, and longer in a few other cases. An insurer or a lender may want them kept longer still. Ask your accountant how long to keep yours, write the answer down and clear the archive against it once a year.

An archive drive is not a backup

Moving finished projects off the laptop onto one external drive frees space and makes that drive the only copy. Keep two archive drives, one of them off site, or connect the archive drive often enough for the cloud backup to keep it: at least once every 30 days on Backblaze’s default history.

What people forget to back up

A computer backup covers what is on the computer, and plenty of a studio’s work isn’t.

• Email. Webmail lives on the provider’s servers, and a deleted message goes for good when the trash empties; Gmail’s empties after 30 days. Export your mail a few times a year (Google Takeout does it for Gmail), or use a desktop mail app that keeps a full copy where your backup can see it.
• Client-management and accounting apps. Proposals, signed contracts and invoices sent from an app live in that app, so export them on a schedule. How well each one lets you take your data out is part of our comparison of HoneyBook, Dubsado, Bonsai and Moxie.
• Files that exist only in the cloud. Figma files, Notion pages and Adobe cloud documents sit on the maker’s servers, not your disk. In Figma, File, then Save local copy downloads a .fig file for the archive; use the other apps’ exports the same way.
• Fonts, brushes and presets. Time Machine copies them with everything else. File History covers only your libraries, so on Windows keep the installers, font files and license keys in a folder inside Documents.
• Recovery codes. Print your password manager’s recovery details and your two-factor backup codes, and keep them somewhere safe, away from the computer.

Test a restore

A backup you have never restored from is a hope. CISA asks for scheduled tests of both full and partial restores, and the partial one takes five steps:

1. Pick two files: one from a project you finished months ago and one you changed this week.
2. Restore both from the desk backup to a new folder, not over the originals, and open them in their apps. A file that copies but won’t open is not backed up.
3. Restore the same two from the cloud backup (in Backblaze, from the View/Restore Files page) and open those too.
4. Check the last-backup date in each app, and if either is older than you expected, find out why.
5. Write down the date of the test and put the next one in the calendar.

The full test comes with your next computer. Set it up from the backup (on a Mac, Migration Assistant restores from a Time Machine backup) instead of copying files across by hand, and you will know the whole backup works.

Tip: run the restore test on the four days you pay estimated tax. Two quarterly chores become one sitting, and neither gets forgotten.

The checklist

Once

• Buy an external drive at least twice the size of your computer’s storage, for backups only.
• Turn on Time Machine with encryption, or File History with every client folder inside a library.
• Install a cloud backup such as Backblaze and let the first upload finish.
• Set the sync folders that hold client work to be available offline.
• Print your recovery codes and keep them away from the desk.
• Write your retention period for client files into your contract.

Every month

• Connect each archive drive, and check the last-backup dates on the desk and in the cloud.

When a project closes

• Archive the final, native and open-format files, the paperwork and the license receipts, with local copies of any Figma or other cloud-only files.

Every quarter

• Restore two files from each backup and open them.
• Export your email and the data in your client-management and accounting apps.

Every year

• Clear the archive against your retention period, replace any drive that reports errors, and check that the off-site copy really is off site.

Backups are one part of the quiet infrastructure behind a studio of one; the computer, the screen and the rest of the room are in Studio Setup.