Disclosure: some links to paid products on Filemere are, or may become, affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That never decides what we list: free options are shown first, and every price is copied from the official page on the date shown. How we choose and how we earn.
3-2-1 backup plan for home users
Three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else. It sounds like a lot; in practice it is one drive and one cloud account.
Updated 2026-11-05. Facts and prices checked on official pages that day.
What 3-2-1 means
3 copies: the original plus two backups.
2 media: for example your laptop's SSD and an external drive – so one failure type cannot take both.
1 off-site: a cloud service or a drive kept at another address, for theft, fire and ransomware.
A simple setup
Copy 1 – your computer.
Copy 2 – external drive with automatic versions: Windows File History or Mac Time Machine (both built in). For a full system image on Windows, a free tool like EaseUS Todo Backup Free adds disk and system backups with schedules.
Copy 3 – off-site: a cloud service. Pick one with version history / deleted-file restore, because plain sync also syncs mistakes.