A Backup Routine a Small Office Will Actually Keep
Most small offices have a backup plan on paper and gaps in practice. A simple routine, written down and tested, beats an elaborate one nobody follows.
A backup is a copy of data taken and stored elsewhere so that it can be used to restore the original after a data loss event. That definition hides the hard part: the copy has to exist, be recent, and actually restore when you need it. In a small office the usual failure is not a lack of tools but a lack of routine. Someone set up a backup years ago, nobody checks it, and the day a laptop is stolen the team learns it stopped working long ago.
Decide what matters first
Before buying anything, list what the office could not work without. For most small teams that is a short list:
- Client files and contracts.
- Accounting data and invoices.
- Email, if it is not already held by a hosted provider.
- Templates, letterheads and anything that took hours to build.
- A record of which online accounts the office uses (more on that in another note).
Programs can usually be reinstalled; your own documents cannot. Focus the routine on data.
Keep more than one copy, in more than one place
A widely repeated rule of thumb is to keep several copies of important data, on different kinds of storage, with at least one copy away from the office. You do not need to follow any rule to the letter, but the idea behind it is sound: one fire, flood, theft or ransomware infection should not be able to destroy every copy at once. A practical small-office version might be an external drive in the office plus an online backup service, or two drives that are swapped and one taken home.
Automate the copying, not the checking
Copying should happen without anyone remembering to do it. Most operating systems include a backup tool, and most online backup services run in the background. What cannot be automated is the judgement that the backup is healthy. Put a recurring reminder in a shared calendar to check that the last backup date is recent and that no errors are reported.
Test a restore
A backup you have never restored from is a hope, not a plan. A few times a year, pick a random file, delete a copy of it in a test folder, and restore it from the backup. Write down how long it took and anything confusing about the process. If one person is the only one who knows how to restore, that is itself a risk: write the steps down where others can find them.
Watch for the disconnected drive
An external drive that stays plugged in all the time is convenient, but malware that encrypts files can reach it too. If you use a drive as your local copy, consider disconnecting it after each backup, or rotating two drives so that one is always offline.
A one-page backup sheet
Keep a single page, printed and stored with your other office records, that says what is backed up, where, how often, who checks it, and how to restore. It takes half an hour to write and it is the page you will want when something goes wrong.
Filed by Harriet Lowell · revised 2026-11-09