Your backup is not a backup if it lives in the same house

Every technician has a version of this conversation, and it always happens on the worst possible day.

Somebody calls because a machine will not start, or a drive has failed, or something got deleted. I ask what their backup situation is. They say, with complete confidence, "oh, it is all in iCloud."

Sometimes it is. Often enough it is not, and by then there is nothing I can do.

So before that day arrives, here is the distinction that matters.

Sync is not backup

iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox are sync services. Their job is to make the same set of files appear on all of your devices, and they are very good at it.

That is not what a backup does. A backup keeps a separate copy with history, so that yesterday's version still exists after today went wrong.

The difference only shows up when something bad happens, and then it shows up all at once:

You delete a photo on your phone. Sync obediently deletes it on the Mac, the iPad, and the web. It did not lose your photo. It did precisely what you asked, everywhere, in about four seconds.
A file gets corrupted or encrypted. The corrupted version syncs up and overwrites the good one.
You lose access to the account — a forgotten password, a lost second factor, a lockout. You have not lost one device. You have lost every copy simultaneously, because there was only ever one copy wearing several hats.

Sync propagates your mistakes. Backup survives them. That is the entire distinction and it is the reason "it is all in iCloud" is not an answer.

Apple says this themselves

This is not my opinion or a technician being fussy. It is written into the iCloud Terms of Service that everybody agrees to and nobody reads.

Under the heading Back up Your Content:

"You are responsible for backing up, to your own computer or other device, any important documents, images or other Content that you store or access via the Service."

And, in the section on backup:

"APPLE DOES NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANTY THAT ANY CONTENT YOU MAY STORE OR ACCESS THROUGH THE SERVICE WILL NOT BE SUBJECT TO INADVERTENT DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, AND APPLE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE SHOULD SUCH DAMAGE, CORRUPTION, LOSS, OR REMOVAL OCCUR."

Read that second one again slowly. Apple does not promise your content will survive, and Apple is not responsible if it does not. They put it in capitals so that nobody could later claim to have missed it.

I am not telling you to stop using iCloud. I use it. It is genuinely good at the job it is for. I am telling you that Apple has already told you, in writing, that the job it is for is not this one — and that keeping your own copy is your responsibility, not theirs.

Microsoft's and Google's terms say materially the same thing about OneDrive and Google Drive. Nobody in this industry is promising to be your last line of defence.

What a real backup looks like

The old rule is still the right one, and it is easy to remember. Three, two, one:

Three copies of anything you care about.
On two different kinds of storage.
With one of them somewhere else entirely.

That last word is the one people skip, and it is the one this post is named after. A Time Machine drive sitting on the desk beside the Mac is a genuinely good backup against the failures that happen most often — a dead drive, a deleted folder, a bad update. It is no protection at all against the house fire, the burglary, or the flooded basement, because the burglar takes both and the fire does not distinguish.

Offsite does not have to be complicated. A second drive at your daughter's house that you swap over every few months is offsite. So is an encrypted online backup service that runs quietly in the background — Backblaze and similar cost a few dollars a month and are, for most households, the least effortful way to satisfy the "one" in three-two-one.

The arrangement I recommend to most people

Nothing exotic. Three parts:

Time Machine to an external drive at home. This is your everyday safety net and it handles the great majority of real incidents. Set it up once, leave the drive plugged in, and it looks after itself.
One offsite copy — either an online backup service, or a second drive kept somewhere other than your house and rotated on a schedule you will actually keep.
iCloud, if you like it, as convenience. Not as one of the three. It is the thing that makes your photos appear on your phone, and that is a real benefit. It is just not a copy in the sense that matters here.

And then test it

This is the step everyone skips, including professionals.

A backup you have never restored from is a theory. Once a year, pick one file — any file — and actually get it back out. If you cannot, you have found out on a calm Tuesday instead of on the worst day of your year, which is the entire point.

I have seen backup drives that had silently stopped running eighteen months earlier. The Mac had been showing a small notification the whole time, in the corner, where nobody looks.

If you would rather someone just set it up

Fair enough. Backups are the least interesting part of owning a computer and the only part that ever really matters.

Setting one up properly is a normal visit: I will look at what you actually have and where it actually lives, tell you honestly which parts of it are already fine, and put the missing pieces in place. Then I will show you how to check that it is still running, because a backup nobody ever looks at eventually stops being one.

If you are calling because something has already been lost — do not use the machine, do not install recovery software on it, and say URGENT when you get in touch. Every hour of use after a deletion reduces what can be recovered.

Call (503) 567-5975 or email support@ironwood.help.