Living as an expat comes with a myriad of challenges and adventures. From navigating new cultures to adapting to unfamiliar environments, expats must constantly be prepared for the unexpected. One critical aspect that often gets overlooked is the importance of having robust backups for your electronic devices.

Imagine this scenario: Sarah, a freelance graphic designer, moved to Bangkok for an exciting life while she worked gigs online. She was thriving professionally and personally until one fateful day when her backpack was sliced off her shoulders and, with it, her laptop. Panic set in as she realized that her portfolio, client projects, passwords, banking information, and all her design tools were on that laptop.

To make matters worse, she realized that her most recent backup was back at her parents’ house. She had just never gotten around to figuring out how to back up her files while overseas. Instead of enjoying her life in Bangkok, the next weeks were intensely stressful as she tried to keep her clients and her sanity, piecing back together her digital life from scratch.

While that story may be slightly fictional, I bet you know someone who has lost data because of missing backups. In fact, I bet you yourself have experienced data loss. While everyone needs a good backup strategy, expats face extra risks and challenges in building a workable backup strategy. I’m here to help you set up a system to set your mind at ease.

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Why backups matter to expats

Every single person with an electronic device needs to create a backup strategy so they can restore their digital life. No computer, hard drive, or phone lasts forever. Every single one can experience technical issues, be lost, or be stolen. Without a backup, the loss is incalculable. Just imagine how you’d feel if you lost all your photos. I’ve seen people at tech support centers in literal tears as they realize that their precious memories are gone forever. Everyone needs good backups. Expats are no exception.

Everyone needs good backups. Expats are no exception.

In fact, expats need good backups more than the “average” person because of risks inherent to our lifestyle as an expat. Even if your host country is safer from theft than your passport country, there’s a good chance that your risk of being robbed is higher in your host country than in your passport country. Foreigners are often targeted for crime, so your risk goes up. Similarly, your risk of being targeted with malware or scams is likely higher in your host country than in your passport country.

Along with a higher risk as an expat, the consequences of losing data are likely higher for an expat than for an average person. Especially if you work remotely or online, as digital nomads do, your electronic device is the key to your world. It’s how you get work done, it’s how you get paid, it’s how you manage your finances and banking, it’s how you communicate with the world. Losing a device is not just inconvenient because you lost your device. It’s potentially devastating because it can mean you lost your job and your access to money at the same time.

If a device is broken, you may be unable to repair it. Repair shops may not repair the brand/type of device you have, they may not be trustworthy, they may charge way too much, or you may be so remote that there just aren’t repair shops. This just happened to me, in fact; a hard drive failed and I found out that no local shops are able to repair the device.

If a device is lost or stolen, your recovery options may be limited. Often, police aren’t helpful, are concerned with “more important” crimes, or want a bribe to help. You just can’t assume that you’ll be able to recover the device; you have to be able to recover your data without it.

Your best solution is to prepare so that, if you can’t recover a device, your world isn’t disrupted. That’s why you need 3-2-1 backups.

The goal: 3-2-1 backups

Computer specialists suggest that you use 3-2-1 backups to maximize your protection. What is a 3-2-1 backup and why do you need it? Glad that you asked.

The phrase “3-2-1 backup” stands for:

• Have three backups
• in two locations
• one which is off-site

Have 3 backups in 2 locations, 1 which is off-site.

To understand why you need 3-2-1 backups, let’s take each of those phrases in turn.

Have three backups

You’ve likely heard of “triple redundancy” before; it’s a foundational principle for designing anything used in a high-risk scenario. Whether spaceships, airplanes, military equipment, power plants, train relays, or even lightbulbs in your car, critical infrastructure is built with triple redundancy. Having three backups of your electronics gives you triple redundancy.

But why triple redundancy? Why not two backups or just one? Well, one backup is better than none and two is better than one, but there is a reason why most systems use triple redundancy and not double or single.

Two is one and one is none.

Two is one and one is none.

The reality is that your devices will break, be lost, or be stolen. If you only have one backup, then you really have no backup because the backup itself can break in the same way as the original can break. It doesn’t take much for your device to break or be stolen at the same time as your backup—think of a thief who steals your computer and the hard drive on the desk next to it—in which case you have no backup at all. To have one backup is to have none.

To have two backups is better, because it’s less likely now that both your original and two backups will all be stolen or go bad at the same time. However, if just one backup breaks, then you’re down to just having one backup—two is one—and you’re now one problem away from having no backups. You’ve reduced your risk tremendously by having two backups, but you’re one problem away from having one backup—and one is none.

Three backups means that even if one has a problem, you still have multiple backups. Your risk of total loss in this case goes down dramatically if you have three backups, and it becomes virtually zero if you have them in two locations, one of which is online.

In two locations

Three backups is great, but it doesn’t help you much if all the backups are in the same location. Imagine, for example, your computer and backups are all on your desk. Imagine the ways that all three of your backups could be lost by one problem:

• Theft. Thieves especially target electronics, so it would be unlikely they would steal your laptop and leave the drives. With one bad event, all three of your devices are gone.
• Natural disasters. It would be unusual if a flood, fire, tornado, hurricane, or earthquake didn’t destroy all of your backups. Once again, if your backups are all in one location, then one event will take them all out.
• Authority seizure. This hopefully isn’t the case for most folks, but if you live in a police state or in a war zone or with corrupt officials, then any incident leading to the seizure of your electronics would likely lead to the seizure of all of your devices.
• Failure. If your electricity surges, lightning strikes a home with bad wiring, or a virus hits your computer, you could lose all your backups at the same time.
• Loss. If you travel with all your electronics in one bag, as is quite common, then it doesn’t take much for that bag to get stolen or lost. If it does, then all of your backups are lost as a result of one problem.
• Ransomware. Ransomware is an increasingly common problem where a hacker infiltrates your devices and encrypts them with a code so as to hold your data “for ransom” until you pay them money. If your devices and backups are all connected, then they will encrypt them all and leave you with no recourse.

It’s not enough to have three backups, you also need to have the backups in multiple locations so that one problem doesn’t wipe out all the backups.¹ You can, of course, use three or more locations to further reduce your risk for backups, but you should have two locations, minimum.

One which is off-site

If you have three backups in two locations, but those two locations are both within your home (e.g. one at your desk and one in your bedroom), then you could still lose all the backups in many of the scenarios listed above. It’s thus important to have at least one backup that is “off-site” and not harmed by a local problem.

For most people, “off-site” means an encrypted backup in the cloud, but it could mean a physical backup in a friend’s house across town. If one location of a backup is in your home and the other location is 30 minutes away at a friend’s house, then it’s highly unlikely that the same disaster would wipe out both backups.²

One thing to add to the 3-2-1 mantra is that you want at least one backup to be offline. That is, disconnected from your computer and the internet. This ensures that, if you’re hit by a ransomware attack, your data is protected in at least one place that can’t be touched by the ransomware attack. If your off-site backup is a hard drive in your friend’s house, then it’s already offline as well. If your off-site backup is in the cloud, then it could be affected by a ransomware attack, so you want to ensure that one of your other backups is offline.³

As an expat, consider making one of your backups in your passport country or a 3rd country. This takes some work to set up, but it can reduce risks for extreme scenarios (e.g. a military coup or civil war where you have to flee without possessions or else you’ll be robbed). You ensure that even in the craziest of emergencies, you have at least one backup of your data.

How to set up 3-2-1

Knowing what to do is half of the battle; the other, more important half, is doing it. My goal here is to help you know how to set up 3-2-1 backups so that you can protect yourself with minimal effort after you set up your system.

We’ll look at two parts: how to set up 3-2-1 for your computer (desktop, laptop) and how to set it up for your mobile devices (phone, tablet).I’ll explain what to do, then explain how to do it on Apple devices (Mac, iPhone, & iPads), but I can’t provide specific directions for Android because I’m not in that ecosystem. If you are and want to recommend specific apps or services, please let me know on social media or email so that I can update this article and help others too.

How to set up 3-2-1 backups for your computer

Set up 3-2-1 backups for your laptop or desktop in this way:

1. Backup one: automatic local backups

You want an automatic backup that runs continuously to an external hard drive. I recommend getting a solid-state drive (SSD) rather than a spinning disk drive, since an SSD has no moving parts and thus is more reliable. Get a SSD that is at least 2-3 times the size of your computer’s hard drive so that you have plenty of space to back it up, and even have versions. SSDs also are usually smaller and don’t need an external power source, meaning you can easily take them on the go.

On a Mac, Apple makes this super easy with Time Machine which will make backups every 30 minutes for the last day, every day for the last month, and weekly backups until the hard drive runs out of space. It manages it 100% for you, so you can set it up and forget it. Read Apple’s directions on How to set up Time Machine.

On a Windows machine, you can either find software that will automatically run backups of your machine to an external drive, or sometimes the external drive itself will come with software to automatically run backups for you.

You now have one backup.

2. Backup two: local backup stored offline

Your second backup is going to be the same as the first, but stored offline in a separate location in your house. You’ll get a second external drive and back it up just like you did the first drive, but this drive you will disconnect from your computer and store it in a separate room of your house, ideally in a hidden location. This could be in a safe, in your underwear drawer, or in a hollowed out book on your shelf. The goal would be to put it in a spot where a thief would never look; they might nab your computer and backup near it, but they won’t find this one. And, by keeping this drive offline, you get protection from ransomware attacks as well.

The way to do this is simple. You have your first backup drive. Make a second backup in the same way, then store it in your hidden location. Every two weeks, switch drives.

On a Mac, Time Machine supports having multiple backups, so it’s dead simple. It’ll keep track of what has been backed up to which drive, so you don’t have to do anything except remember to swap drives. See Apple’s directions here. Then just set a reminder to swap out the drives every two weeks and find a good spot to hide the drive that’s disconnected.⁴

On a Windows machine, your software that runs the backups for your first backup will likely support multiple backups. The software with an external drive may or may not also do this, depending on what it is. One workaround would be to get two different brands of external drives and thus have two different apps that run backups, one for each drive.

You now have two backups in two locations.

3. Backup three: cloud storage or offsite

For your third backup, you’ll want to store it off-site. This means you could just make a third backup to a third drive exactly like you made the second backup—and then store it at a friend’s house and rotate it every few weeks.

A more convenient and simpler way is to use cloud backup. Since the backup is online, it’s necessarily at an off-site location and so you have an off-site backup.⁵ If you choose a cloud storage company, you need to protect your data and privacy by making sure to use a cloud company that end-to-end encryption with zero knowledge. You’ll also want to make sure that the cloud storage has a variety of data restoration options like allowing you to download one file at a time or shipping you an external hard drive of your entire backup if needed.

For over a decade, I’ve been using a service called Backblaze and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Here’s a few reasons I’m so happy with their service:

• End-to-end encryption. I choose and store the encryption key (zero knowledge encryption) so that, even if someone else got my data, an employee snooped it, or a government issued a warrant for it, no one could read the data unless I gave them my key. My data is safe.
• Unlimited data. There’s no limit to how much data Backblaze will backup, all for a low monthly fee. Backup everything for one low price.
• Automatic backups with control. You can choose what files get backed up, how often, and the speed of the backups. Set it and forget it. Even if you’re out and away from your external drives, you have an active backup.
• Back up external drives. Backblaze backs up any external drive that’s connected to your Mac (and even NAS drives). That’s a fantastic feature.
• Easy restore options. You can download one file at a time, a ZIP of multiple files, or you can request BackBlaze to send you an external drive of however much data you want. Return that drive within 30 days, and it’s all free. I’ve restored tons of data with Backblaze and can tell you that it’s awesome.

I can’t recommend Backblaze highly enough. They also support both Windows and Macs, so you’re good to go no matter what device you’ve got!

There you go. You’ve now got three backups in two locations, one of which is off-site. You’ve got robust protection for your computer.

How to set up 3-2-1 backups for mobile devices

Mobile devices like phones and tablets can be a bit trickier to back up 3-2-1, but there are some good options all the same. Let’s walk through how to get 3-2-1 backups for those devices

1. Backup one: cloud backup

Most mobile devices come with an option to back it up daily to the cloud. Apple’s iCloud backup will do this automatically, and I believe most Android devices have an equivalent service.

For iPhone and iPad, here are Apple’s directions on how to set up iCloud backups. Make sure to turn on Advanced Data Protection to ensure that your online backups are end-to-end encrypted and no one, not even Apple, can access them.

For Android devices, find an app/service that supports daily online backups with end-to-end encryption. If you know of one, please let me know via social media or email.

You now have one backup that is also off-site.

2. Backup two: computer

For your second backup, you’ll want to backup your device to your computer (or to an external drive, or both) around every two weeks. I set a reminder on my phone to back up my mobile devices to my computer every two weeks. It takes time to back up my devices and my kids’ devices, but it’s the only way I know of to create a second backup.

For iPhone or iPad, here’s Apple’s directions on how to back it up to your Windows PC or to your Mac. Make sure to choose to encrypt the backups and SAVE THE PASSWORD so that you can restore from the backup in the future.⁶

For Android, figure out how to backup your specific model to your computer (Windows or Mac). There’s enough different devices, and all work slightly differently, so I can’t give you specific directions here, but a quick search should give you the information you need.

You now have two backups in two locations, one of which is off-site.

3. Backup three: online

The third backup for a mobile device is tricky since most computers won’t back up multiple copies of your mobile device. f you want, you could figure out a way to keep multiple backups on separate external drives and rotate through them, but I haven’t found a reliable and simple way to do this.

Instead, what I rely on for my third backup is the online backups that Backblaze provides. Since Backblaze automatically backs up my computer and external drives to the cloud, it also backs up my mobile device backups that are on my computer or external drives. This backup is thus not a third separate backup—it’s a backup of my second backup—but if a problem arose, it gives me a third backup from which I could restore my devices.

You now have three backups in two locations, one of which is off-site. Even better, your backups are technically in three locations (iCloud, your computer, and Backblaze), two of which are off-site.

Test the backups

There you go! This setup will give you 3-2-1 backups of your computer and mobile devices so that you can keep your data (and your job) even in crazy situations. Before I’m done, one quick suggestion: test your backups.

Right after you get things setup and then every 6 months to a year, “stress test” your system to make sure that you can access it should one of your devices break. The last thing you want to find out is that you have 3-2-1 backups, but the passwords for them all were only on the device that broke and thus the backups are all worthless.

So do a “stress test” exercise and pretend that your phone is completely gone—can you access the backups? Try it again if your computer is gone—can you restore the backups? Now pretend both your phone and your computer are gone—can you still access the backups on a new device?

I speak from personal experience: one of the most frustrating things is to have a backup of a device that got lost, but be unable to access the backup because you don’t know what the password is.⁷

Conclusion

Just like Sarah, many expats face the daunting reality of data loss. Whether it’s theft, a natural disaster, or technical failure, the consequences can be severe, especially when you’re far from familiar resources and support. Setting up a robust 3-2-1 backup strategy is not just about protecting your digital files; it’s about ensuring that you can continue to thrive in your expat journey without the fear of losing essential data. By having three backups in two locations, with one off-site and offline, you can sleep safe at night knowing that your personal and professional life are secure.

Remember, the unexpected can happen at any moment, and being prepared is the key to maintaining your peace of mind. By investing time and resources into setting up a reliable backup system, you ensure that you won’t be left scrambling to piece your life back together in the wake of a disaster. Learn from Sarah’s experience—don’t wait until it’s too late. Start your backup plan today and keep your expat adventure on track, no matter what comes your way.

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Footnotes

1. A fascinating example of the need to have redundancies in multiple locations is the famous Apollo 13 disaster (made into a fantastic movie starring Tom Hanks & Kevin Bacon). In the fantastic book Apollo 13 written by Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, he explains that part of the disaster for Apollo 13 was that, though Apollo 13 had triple redundancy for its oxygen supply (i.e. 3 separate tanks of oxygen), all three tanks were placed side-by-side on the same shelf of Apollo 13. The result was that, the explosion that destroyed one tank also destroyed the other two tanks of oxygen, nearly killing the crew. After Apollo 13, NASA now designs triple redundancy with multiple locations in mind to prevent a similar disaster. ↩︎
2. Some natural disasters could affect you and your friend’s house: tornados, hurricanes, floods, and fires often affect large areas. However, it’s unusual even for these sorts of disasters to affect two areas 30 minutes away to the same degree, so you reduce your risk through this off-site storage. ↩︎
3. Another benefit of an off-site backup is that the drives are not active, which can extend the lifespan of a spinning disk drive. Since SSDs have no moving parts, though, being non-active has less effect on them. ↩︎
4. You could do more frequent than every 2 weeks, it just means a tad more hassle. I don’t recommend a frequency of less than every 2 weeks, because you could potentially lose all the new data since you swapped the drives. If you rotated drives every 4 weeks, then you could lose an entire month’s worth of work and that seems too much to me. ↩︎
5. Good cloud backup companies, in fact, will backup your files in multiple locations of their servers so that, when their servers or hard drives fail, they have your data redundantly stored. This just serves as one backup for our purposes, though, because all it takes is one failure at the cloud storage company and your data is lost. People who had storage at Google learned this the hard way when an error deleted all redundancies of data. Likewise, just this week Instagram just permanently deleted some user’s photos across all of their servers. ↩︎
6. For Mac users, you can choose to save the password to your keychain, which is fine, but ALSO make sure to write down the password or save it in a password manager. ↩︎
7. True story. My wife lost her phone and I have a backup of it to my computer, but I can’t access the backup because I don’t know what the password is. For some reason, the password saved in my password manager is incorrect and it’s not in my Keychain. I’ve tried hundreds of options and permutations of the passwords we think we would have used, but still can’t unlock it. ↩︎