3-2-1 Backup Strategy Explained

In a survey conducted by Backblaze in 2024, 16% of people said that they never back up their data. Though it’s a massive decrease from 35% of people in 2008, it’s still a great number of people who are at high risk of losing their data.

Anecdotally, I have – and I am sure you have too – heard stories of people losing their important data because their devices got stolen or their computers ran into major issues. All of these are easily preventable with the right backup strategy, such as the 3-2-1 backup strategy.

In this article, we’ll explain the 3-2-1 backup strategy and how you can protect your data using this strategy.

What is the 3-2-1 backup strategy?

The 3-2-1 backup strategy or 3-2-1 backup rule is a guideline on how to backup your data. This strategy was first introduced in 2009 by Peter Krogh, a photographer and author of The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers.

The 3-2-1 in 3-2-1 backup strategy stands for the following:

• Create 3 (three) copies of your data
• Store them in 2 (two) different storage media types
• In at least 1 (one) offsite backup location

The point of this backup strategy is to avoid a single point of failure in creating a backup and to mitigate the risks of data loss. If, for example, you only save your data locally on your computer, you’re at high risk of losing your data when you experience hardware or software issues. This backup strategy aims to prevent exactly that kind of scenario.

Though this concept has been around for 16 years, many still believe that the 3-2-1 backup rule is the gold standard in backup.

The importance of the 3-2-1 backup strategy

Data loss does occur, and it occurs a lot. In the same survey I quoted at the beginning of the article, it mentioned that 74% of Americans who own a computer have accidentally deleted important data and 57% have experienced a security incident on their computer.

Not only among personal users, data loss also happens often in organizations. Among IT organizations surveyed, only 42% of organizations that experienced data loss were able to restore all their data.

The survey also cited that 39% of IT decision-makers report that their organizations need to restore data from backups at least once a month, with the following as top reasons:

• Archived or deleted data (62%)
• Backup software failure (54%)
• Hard drive failure (52%)
• Cyber attacks (49%)

Though I believe we all agree that backup is super important, the survey also emphasizes the importance of a proper backup strategy and this is where the 3-2-1 backup rule steps in.

By performing a 3-2-1 backup strategy, you’re mitigating the risks of losing important data due to common threats such as hardware failures, natural disasters, cyber attacks, human errors, theft, and so on.

How to perform the 3-2-1 backup strategy

First, it’s important to note that the 3-2-1 backup strategy is more of a guideline rather than a rigid rule. You don’t need to follow the exact steps, and you’re free to tweak it as you see fit.

Here’s how you can perform the 3-2-1 backup strategy. Bear in mind that the following guide is written for personal users.

1. Create three copies of the data

After deciding which important data you want to back up, you need to create three copies of that data. If you want to create more than three, that’s perfectly fine. The more, the better.

2. Store data in two different storage media types

Keep copies of your important data in two types of storage media. For example, you can keep one of the copies locally on your computer, and the other ones in your preferred storage media (external hard drives or USB flash drives).

3. Keep one of the copies in one off site location

One off-site location refers to another location outside of where you typically save your data. For example, if you typically keep most of your data at home, you need to save one of the copies in another place. For this, you can keep a copy of your data in Cloud storage since the data will be stored “in the cloud” a.k.a other computers somewhere.

Additional tips

There are some tips related to the 3-2-1 backup strategy that I’d also like to recommend:

• Regularly test and verify if your backup works. Hardware or software issues happen every now and again, so it’s important to double-check.
• Set a regular backup frequency that’s convenient for you and stick to it. Use a reminder if needed.
• Figure out how long you want to keep your backups before they’re deleted. These days backup software would give you several options, so you can easily choose one that suits you best.
• Regularly audit and keep records of your data. This will help with storage space management, avoid data redundancy, and allow you to prioritize important data for backup.
• Make sure that you have access control to your backup and encrypt important data if needed.

Conclusion

3-2-1 backup strategy (or 3-2-1 backup rule) is a set of rules of thumb in creating a backup of your important data. This backup strategy is still widely used as a gold standard in data protection efforts.

The strategy itself is simple: create 3 (three) copies of your data in 2 (two) storage media, 1 (one) of them in an off-site location. The purpose of this strategy is to avoid a single point of backup failure and to mitigate the risks of losing your data.

I hope by now you understand this strategy better, and you should follow the guideline if you haven’t already. Don’t wait until you lose your data to create a backup, do a 3-2-1 backup strategy today!

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