All posts by Barry Kaufman

How to Back Up Your Android

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-back-up-your-android/

A decorative image showing a tablet and a cellphone with a backup symbol and the Android logo.

Think for a second about that Android device in your hand. Maybe it’s a smartphone, maybe it’s a tablet. Whether it’s a Samsung, Google, or Motorola, it still has Android in its DNA. But more important than its DNA is the data stored in its memory. 

You probably don’t think about how much irreplaceable data is in there—treasured photos, important documentation, passwords, bank information, the list goes on. But you might want to give it a few minutes of your time because, as smart as your phone is, it’s also remarkably fragile. A trip down the stairs or a dip in the toilet and your phone is toast, taking with it all of that important data. Opening one wrong email or clicking one wrong link could be all it takes for ransomware to infiltrate your data.

In cases like these, the best solution is an ounce of prevention: Getting all those important files backed up before disaster strikes. 

Before we get your Droid all backed up and ready to roll, it’s important to understand why you should back up, why syncing isn’t enough, how different phones offer different means of backup, and why a 3-2-1 backup strategy should be your ultimate goal.

And since we’re talking Androids, we’ll obviously be spending a little time in a galaxy far, far away.

“Important to Back Up Your Data, It Is.” – Master Yoda, Probably

In order to understand the importance of backing up your Android, it might help to picture perhaps two of the most famous droids in cinematic history, and in fact the characters who inspired your phone’s name: R2-D2 and C-3PO. 

(Seriously, Lucasfilm registered the trademark on the word “droid” in 1977 and has licensed it to both Motorola and Verizon. If you’re reading this, Disney, please don’t sue.)

If you recall the movie “The Force Awakens,” you’ll remember the sub-plot about the search for Luke Skywalker, who had gone into hiding. As the film opens, plucky little droid BB-8 obtained part of the map that could locate him. However, the rest of the map was locked away in R2-D2’s memory units, rendering BB-8’s map useless. Since R2-D2 was mysteriously shut down for purposes of advancing the movie’s plot, that data was unobtainable and thus required a whole film’s worth of daring adventure to restore.

  • Protection against data loss: Maybe your phone gets dropped into a pond or maybe it gets blasted by TIE fighters. Either way, without a proper backup that data is deader than Greedo.
  • Easy Upgrading: Jedi Master Qui-Gonn Jinn once said there’s always a bigger fish. Likewise, there’s always a shinier, newer Android device. When you upgrade, you can pull all your old data from your backup and get started with ease.
  • Protecting against ransomware, malware, and viruses: Even your phone is susceptible to attacks from cybercriminals who can lock up your data and demand payment to restore it. Backing it up is like sending your vital data blasting out through an escape pod just as the Empire descends for retrieval later.

I Have a Syncing Feeling About This

Fortunately, Princess Leia and company seem to have learned their lesson about proper backups by the time of “Rise of Skywalker,” since they had a backup ready for C-3PO. After wiping his hard drive so that the protocol droid could bypass his programming and read the Sith language found on an ancient knife (yes, the plot was that ridiculous), 3PO was able to restore his memories thanks to a backup he’d entrusted to R2. 

Had they chosen to merely sync C-3PO’s internal data, he would have been stuck remembering nothing of the Star Wars saga except for “Rise of Skywalker,” which would be a tragic fate for anyone. 

With syncing, data is maintained in one form across devices or platforms. This has its usefulness, especially when you can edit something on your phone or tablet and see those changes on your laptop, for example, but also has drawbacks that make it a poor substitute for backing up. Among them:

  • Limited coverage of what gets synced: Syncing will often focus on specific verticals within data, such as photos, contacts, or calendars. For example, when you make changes to a contact in your phone or device, Google will automatically update that contact in the cloud. But it won’t necessarily automatically update your call or text message history.
  • Overwriting or deleting data: If C-3PO had been set to sync his data with R2-D2, once it was deleted in his shiny golden head it would be deleted across all backups, and all of the data would have been lost before you could say “Utini.” If you delete your data from your phone, it gets deleted from whatever service you’re using to sync devices. 
  • Vulnerability to ransomware: If you click a malicious link and your device gets zapped with ransomware, your sync service will automatically synchronize the corrupted files. 

These Aren’t the Droids You’re Looking For

It’s all well and good to hear about backing up fictional droids, but what about the actual Android device in your hand? Thankfully, it’s somehow even simpler in our galaxy than it is in one where people have actual spaceships. 

Both Google and Samsung have backup programs for their respective devices, and we’ll explain a third option where you manage the backups. 

Google One

Native to Google’s Pixel devices, but also found on nearly every Android device since it was introduced in 2021, Google One offers a backup service analogous to iCloud, with 15GB of free storage tied to your Google account. 

A screenshot of an Android account storage screen.
Sorry, potential stalkers. I remembered to blur my email address.

Pros: Works automatically. Backs up apps, phone history, text messages, photos, contacts, and assorted calendar information associated with your account. It can also load data automatically onto a new device when you sign in with your Google account.

Cons: You have to pick and choose what gets backed up. Yes, this is a con. This level of control might seem nice, but again, we’d recommend you just back up everything. Honestly, the more granular you get with what gets backed up, the more likely you are to forget to back up something you might need. It also operates more like a sync than a backup, so accidental erasure is still a risk. To truly back up your data and keep it safe, you’ll need to keep a third copy of the data somewhere (we’ll explain that later). Also, if you get close to maxing out your storage, ready yourself for endless reminders to buy more storage across all of your devices. 

Samsung Smart Switch

As the heavy hitter in the Android space, Samsung wasn’t about to let its Galaxy devices go without a built-in backup solution. Samsung’s Smart Switch comes pre-loaded on every Galaxy device. While it’s designed for moving data from one Galaxy to another, it can also create a backup to your Mac or PC using the Smart Switch app.

A screenshot of a Samsung system storage screen.
Yeah, I’m still using an S21. Don’t @ me.

Backing Up Through Your Mac or PC

Of course, one of the great advantages of the Android operating system is its ability to play nice with pretty much every other operating system, unlike its Apple counterpart. Simply plug your charging cable into an available USB slot and your phone will essentially act like an external hard drive. On a Windows machine, this will show up like a separate hard drive nested under your PC in file explorer. On a Mac, you’ll need to take the extra step of downloading Android File Transfer. 

Pros: Functions essentially like an external drive, meaning you can track down individual files or whole folders for targeted backup.

Cons: Android’s file structure can often make individual files difficult to track down. Transfer times can often drag on to the point of absurdity.

How to Back Up Your Life

The guides in this series help you protect your content across many different platforms. We’re working on developing this list—please comment below if you’d like to see another platform covered.

“Come On Buddy, We’re Not Out of This Yet.” – Han Solo, Shortly After Backing Up His Phone, Probably

Now that you have your data safely backed up and secured against any accidental destruction, loss, or damage to your Android, you might think you’re safe. But the cornerstone of any good backup strategy rests on not one, not two, but three pillars. 

If you really need to be told why this is important, we’ve covered it here. But suffice to say, a 3-2-1 strategy relies on a trio of separate, redundant backups. One copy of your data stays on your Android device. Another copy of your data is stored on a separate on-premises device, such as your PC or an external hard drive (or, if available, a convenient R2-model astromech). Finally, a third copy stays off-premises—preferably in the cloud—to avoid the possibility of theft, fire, or total planetary destruction via Death Star. 

If you’re a Backblaze Computer Backup user, that last step is taken care of. Backblaze backs up your entire computer, including any Android backups you saved to your Mac or PC. 

By maintaining three redundant copies of important data—two on local devices and a third in a separate location—you are comprehensively protected against data loss. You may not be carrying around plans for the Empire’s new battle station, but the precious memories locked away on your Android device are just as important as protecting them.

May the force be with you (and again, Disney, please don’t sue).

The post How to Back Up Your Android appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

What “Dead to Me” Taught Us About 3-2-1 Backup

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-dead-to-me-taught-us-about-3-2-1-backup/

A decorative image showing a TV screen with a spotlight coming from the right. The numerals 3, 2, 1 are displayed on the background of the image; the words Dead to Me are displayed on the TV screen.

When you start thinking about backup strategies, it tends to get inside your head. Like Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man”, seeing equations float around him as he calculates his odds in Vegas, the mental exercise of ensuring your backups have backups of their own tends to manifest itself in the strangest places.

Take, for example, the finale of the Netflix show “Dead to Me” starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. The show wrapped up a few months back and should definitely be moving toward the top of your “I’ve been meaning to watch that” list. And if you have already seen it, I can’t stress enough how much more you pick up on a second time around.

Anyway, to a certain segment of the audience, the climax of the show served as a fitting conclusion to a whole host of storyline threads whose dense weave kept viewers enthralled from the first episode to the last. But to those of us who tend to worry about things like a proper 3-2-1- backup strategy, the final few episodes concealed a subtle message about the importance of proper data backup procedures.

Let’s dig into what “Dead to Me” can teach us about the importance of a good backup strategy.

Defining a 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

As we’ve discussed at length before, a good 3-2-1- backup strategy involves three copies of your data:

  • One: On-site storage on your home device. Your phone, your laptop, your tablet, whatever. If you can physically touch it and your files are in there somewhere, that’s your first copy.
  • Two: On-site storage on a separate device. This can be an external hard drive, a thumb drive, or if you’re on a Mac, Time Machine. If it’s not physically in the device, but it’s still somewhere close by, that’s your second copy.
  • Three: Off-site backup. This should automatically scan the files on your device and upload copies to the cloud for safe-keeping. (Pssst, we’re partial to Backblaze’s astonishingly simple cloud back up here).

Okay, So What Does That Have to Do With “Dead to Me”?

There’s kind of a long road ahead, so buckle up.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, or who binged it so long ago you need a refresher, “Dead to Me” follows the story of two friends, Jen (Applegate) and Judy (Cardellini). Jen is a recently widowed mom whose husband Ted had been killed in a hit and run shortly before the show started. Judy is a woman she meets during a group therapy session, who claims to have lost her husband as well.

Only, as it turns out, Judy didn’t lose her husband. They just split up—after an argument that started when they accidentally struck and killed Jen’s husband.

Intrigued yet? We’re only on the first episode.

By the end of the first season, Jen has discovered the truth about Judy (but they’re still friends), Judy is dating a police officer who is investigating the crime she committed, and her ex-husband Steve (James Marsden, playing against his usual type as a jerk) is desperately trying to cover up the crime while avoiding the Greek mafia, who have a contract out on him.

We cannot stress enough that all of this craziness happens in the first season, which ends with Jen accidentally murdering Steve by—of course—cracking him in the head with a wooden bird, which winds up as a critical plot point.

A image of a wooden bird statue.
You see tchotchke. I see danger.

From there the plot twists around on itself, throwing every curveball imaginable at you from secret twin brothers to money laundering schemes to torrid affairs (and hey, we already mentioned the Greek mafia). But critical to our point is one plot thread that could have been avoided with a proper backup strategy.

Karen and the… Let’s Call It 2-1 Strategy

A minor character in the first few seasons, Karen is a neighbor of Jen’s who… well, can be kind of a Karen. You know that person in your neighborhood that you suspect reports you to the Homeowner’s Association whenever your grass gets a little too long? That’s her.

As the neighborhood Karen, she has a natural inclination to keep an eye on things. As such, her house is ringed by security cameras. And as we learned in the season two premiere, one of those cameras just happened to spy Steve on his way to Jen’s house the night he was murdered.

Plot twist, right?

Since this is a huge piece of evidence implicating them in the murder they’re actively covering up, Jen and Judy have to ensure that the incriminating footage is destroyed forever. That means deleting the footage, which they discover has been safely stored in the cloud. They first try to convince Jeff, Karen’s ex, to log on and do it (side note: this happens after they discovered he was having an affair with one of Judy’s ex-boyfriends, because this show is bonkers) but unfortunately Karen has changed the password to her cloud storage.

So they have to sweet-talk their way into Karen’s house (greasing the wheels with her favorite dish—Mexican lasagna with extra raisins) and get her to delete the footage off the cloud. It’s a wonderful moment of female camaraderie as they convince Karen that the data on the cloud represents too many painful memories of her time with her ex. And when Karen finally drags the folder to the trash, we cheer her for finding the strength to move on.

A image of three women sitting at a counter drinking coffee in front of an open laptop.
Just a couple of friends, deleting files over coffee.

And then, the punchline.

“And if I ever want to see it again, I have it backed up on my hard drive,” she exclaims, holding up her external drive backup. Jen and Judy manage to steal that, and in doing so get away with their crime scot-free.

What Should Karen Have Done?

Look, we get that the show is trying to get us to root for Jen and Judy as our protagonists, but to be honest, murder is one of those things that is a little hard to look past.

Especially given that the FBI was looking into the crime at that point in the show, what Karen did could legally be considered obstruction of justice. Or at least unintended obstruction of justice, which we’re pretty sure is still a crime. (We on the blog team are definitely not lawyers, though.)

Had Karen utilized a proper 3-2-1 strategy, she should have had a third copy—the one on her local drive—even after she was tricked into deleting it from the cloud and handing over her external drive. And, if she was using Backblaze, she would have been able to access an earlier version of her backup with either our standard 30-day version history or Extended Version History. So, she could have pulled a copy even after she deleted it.

The Moral of the Story Is: 3-2-1 Backups Are Still the Best

Karen handed over all the incriminating evidence about the murder to the person who committed it. Which, true, made for a happy ending as far as the show is concerned. But for those of us who can’t seem to get 3-2-1 backup strategies out of our head, she committed a serious blunder. A 2-1 backup strategy just won’t cut it.

And that, folks, is how “Dead to Me” reminds us all once again that a 3-2-1 backup strategy is still the best way to keep your data safe and out of the hands of nefarious, if endearing, murderers.

The post What “Dead to Me” Taught Us About 3-2-1 Backup appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Shooting for the Clouds: How One Photo Storage Service Moved Beyond Physical Devices

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/shooting-for-the-clouds-how-one-photo-storage-service-moved-beyond-physical-devices/

The sheer number of creative and unique ways our customers and partners utilize Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage never ceases to amaze us. Whether it’s pairing our storage with a streaming platform to deliver seamless video or protecting research data that is saving lives, we applaud their ingenuity. From time to time, we like to put the spotlight on one of these inspired customers, which brings us to the company we’re highlighting today: Monument, a photo management service with a strong focus on security and privacy.

The TL;DR

Situation: The Monument story started with a physical device where customers could securely save photos, but they saw the winds shifting to the cloud. They wanted to offer users the flexibility and automation that the cloud provides while maintaining their focus on privacy and security.

Solution: Monument launched their cloud-based offering, Monument Cloud, with Backblaze as its storage backbone. User photos are encrypted and stored in Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, and are accessible via the Monument Cloud app.

Result: Monument Cloud eliminates the need for users to maintain a physical device at their homes or offices. Users just install the Monument Cloud app on their devices and their photos and videos are automatically backed up, fully encrypted, organized, and shareable.

What Is Monument?

Monument was founded in 2016 by a group of engineers and designers who wanted an easy way to back up and organize their photos without giving up their privacy and security. Since smartphones saturated the market, the average person’s digital photo archive has grown exponentially. The average user has around 2,100 photos on their smartphone at any given time, and that’s not even counting the photos stashed away on various old laptops, hard drives, USBs, and devices.

Photo management services like Google Photos stepped in to help folks corral all of those memories. But, most photo management services are a black box—you don’t know how they’re using your data or your images. Monument wanted to give folks the same functionality as something like iCloud or Google Photos while also keeping their private data private.

“There are plenty of photo storage solutions right now, but they come with limitations and fail to offer transparency about their privacy policies—how photos are being used or processed” said Monument’s co-founder Ercan Erciyes. “At Monument, we reimagined how we store and access our photos and provided a clutter-free experience while keeping users in the center, not their personal data.”

They launched their first generation product in 2017—a physical storage device with advanced AI software that helps users manage photo libraries between devices and organize photos by faces, scenery, and other properties. The hardware side was fueled by two rounds of Kickstarter funding, each helping create new versions of the company’s smart storage device powered by a neural processing unit (NPU) that lived on-device and allowed access from anywhere.

An Eye for Secure Photo Storage

That emphasis on privacy fueled the software side of Monument’s offering, an AI-driven approach that allows easy searchability of photos without processing any of the metadata on Monument’s end. Advanced image recognition couples with slick de-duplication features for an experience that catalogs photos without exposing photographers’ data to algorithms that influence their choices. No ads, no profiling, no creepy trackers, and Monument doesn’t use or sell customers’ personal data.

We were getting a lot of questions along the lines of, “What happens if my house catches fire?” or “What if there is physical damage to the device?” so we could see there was a lot of interest in a cloud solution.”

—Ercan Erciyes, Co-Founder, Monument Labs, Inc.

The Gathering Cloud

With the rise of cloud storage, Monument saw their typical consumer shifting away from on-prem solutions. “We were getting a lot of questions along the lines of, ‘What happens if my house catches fire?’ or ‘What if there is physical damage to the device?’ so we could see there was a lot of interest in a cloud solution,” said Ercan. “Plus there were a lot of users that didn’t want a physical device in their home.”

Their answer: Offer the same privacy-first service through a comprehensive cloud solution.

Using Free Credits Wisely

Launching a cloud-based storage service built around their philosophy of privacy and security was a clear necessity for the company’s future. To kick off their move to the cloud, Monument utilized free startup credits from AWS. But, they knew free credits wouldn’t last forever. Rather than using the credits to build a minimum viable product as fast as humanly possible, they took a very measured approach. “The credits are sweet,” Ercan said, “But you need to pay attention to your long-term vision. You need to have a backup plan, so to speak.” (We think so, too.)

Ercan ran the numbers with success in mind and realized they’d ultimately lose money if they built the infrastructure for Monument Cloud on AWS. He also didn’t want to accumulate tech debt and become locked in to AWS.

They ended up using the credits to develop the AI model, but not to build their infrastructure. For that they turned to specialized cloud providers.

Integrating Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage

Monument created a lean tech stack that incorporated Backblaze B2 for long-term encrypted storage. They run their AI software on Vultr, a Backblaze compute partner that offers free egress fees between the two services. And, they use another specialized cloud provider to store thumbnails that are displayed in the Monument Cloud app. The cloud service has quickly become the company’s flagship offering, drawing 25,000 active users.

Group Photos: Serving New Customers

With infrastructure that will scale without cutting into their margins, Monument is poised to serve an increasing number of customers who care about what happens to their personal data. More and more, customers are seeking out alternatives to big name cloud providers, using services like DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search or WhatsApp instead of garden variety text messaging apps. With a distributed, multi-cloud system, they can serve these types of customers with a cloud option while keeping data privacy front and center. And the customers that gravitate to this value proposition are wide-ranging.

Of course, the first ones you might think of would be prolific photo takers or even amateur photographers, but Ercan pointed out some surprising use cases for their technology. “We are seeing a lot of different use cases coming up from schools, real estate companies, and even elder care systems,” he said. With Monument’s new cloud solution, classrooms are exploring new online frontiers in education, and families scattered around the world are able to share photos with their elderly relatives.

A Monument to Security

Challenging monster brands like Google is no small task as a small team of just five people. Monument does it by keeping a laser focus on their core values and their customers’ needs. “If you keep the user’s needs in the center, building a solution doesn’t require an army of engineers,” Ercan said. Without having to worry about how to use customer data to build algorithms that keep advertisers happy, Monument can focus on serving their customers what they actually need—a photo management solution that just works.

Monument Co-founders Semih Hazar (left) and Ercan Erciyes (right)

Monument and Backblaze

Whether you’re the family photographer, the office party chronicler, or you just have a convoluted system of hard drives stickered and slotted onto a shelf somewhere that you’d like to get rid of, first and foremost: Make sure you’re availing yourself of the very reasonable storage available from Backblaze for archiving or backing up your data.

After you’re done with that: Check out Monument.

The post Shooting for the Clouds: How One Photo Storage Service Moved Beyond Physical Devices appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Education Unplugged: Google Ends Unlimited Storage for Schools

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/education-unplugged-google-ends-unlimited-storage-for-schools/

For schools and universities, data storage is paramount. Staff, administrators, and educators, not to mention students, need a secure place to store files. Add to that the legacy accounts of alumni storing irreplaceable files from their education, and you have a massive need for storage.

For a long time, Google was happy to oblige. In 2006, the company launched Google Apps for Education (later G Suite for Education; now Google Workplace for Education), offering free unlimited storage for qualifying schools and districts. But when they’d reached market penetration—somewhere in the neighborhood of 83% of school districts according to EdWeek Research Center—they ended the unlimited storage policy many schools had come to rely on.

If you already know about Google’s policy change and are looking for a solution to save your data and your budget, getting started with Backblaze B2 is easy. Otherwise, read on to learn more about the change, what it may mean for you in the long-term, and a Backblaze partnership with Carahsoft that eases purchasing through local, state, and federal buying programs.

Office Hours Are Over—Google Ends Unlimited Storage for Educational Institutions

Google’s policy change took effect in July 2022, and many schools and universities had to find alternative storage solutions or change their internal storage policies to stay within the new limits. Under the terms of the new policy, Google offers a baseline of 100TB of pooled storage shared across all users.

The policy shift was spurred, Google says, because “as we’ve grown to serve more schools and universities each year, storage consumption has also rapidly accelerated. Storage is not being consumed equitably across—nor within—institutions, and school leaders often don’t have the tools they need to manage this.”

For some school districts, colleges, and universities, this policy shift meant having to reach out to alumni with the request that they back up all their own data. It also hit some already-strapped IT budgets particularly hard. Estimates vary, but depending on the size of the school and their data needs, they could be looking at anywhere up to an extra $70,000 a year in storage costs.

That’s a non-negligible fee for a service that has become increasingly vital for schools. We’ve written about how important cloud storage is for schools, but it’s worth reiterating here.

School is in Session

Not only will a secure cloud storage solution help protect school districts from threats of ransomware, it can also help maintain predictable operating expenses and create opportunities for collaboration through remote learning. In cases like Kansas’ Pittsburg State University, it helped keep data safe from natural disasters that abound in places like Tornado Alley. Pittsburg State implemented Backblaze B2 as their off-site backup in the event of disaster and used Object Lock functionality to safeguard data from ransomware.

Photo Credit: Pittsburg State University

The academic world is still adjusting to Google’s policy change. Stories have emerged of schools simply dropping Google and being forced to move data out of thousands of alumni accounts. A quick-fix solution to avoid Google’s new fee structure, this strategy is being undertaken without a clear answer to the question of how alumni can access their own data after the move. After all, how up to date are those alumni email lists?

A Google Alternative for Schools

School districts, colleges, and universities need to find a new, budget-friendly way forward. If you’re still struggling to find an alternative storage solution now that the bell has rung and Google has dismissed its free storage, Backblaze can help you find a new home on the cloud.

Backblaze B2 offers schools unlimited, pay-as-you-go storage at a fraction of the price of Google, enabling you to continue offering students and alumni the storage space they’ve come to expect. For colleges, universities, and school districts not buying through government purchasing programs, you can sign up for Backblaze B2 directly. We offer 10TB of storage free so that you can see if it works for you, but if you want to do a larger or customized proof of concept, reach out to our Sales team.

Accessing Backblaze Through Your Local, State, or Federal Buying Program

As we revealed during this year’s Educause conference, Backblaze has recently rolled out a partnership with Carahsoft aimed squarely at budget-conscious educational institutions. The partnership brings Backblaze services to educational institutions with a capacity-based pricing model that’s a fraction of the price of traditional cloud providers like Google. And it can be purchased through local, state, or federal buying programs. If you buy IT services for your district through a distributor, this solution could work for you. Visit the partnership announcement to learn more.

The post Education Unplugged: Google Ends Unlimited Storage for Schools appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Download and Back Up Your Twitter Account

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-download-and-back-up-your-twitter-account/

If you’ve been following the news lately, you might be thinking now is a good time to start downloading and backing up your Twitter history.

It’s officially the Elon Age of Twitter, and subsequently, there have been a few people rumbling about leaving the platform following Musk’s firing of top executives and an alarming rise in hate speech. Needless to say, we’re sticking around—you might have stumbled upon this article from Twitter itself. We just can’t quit the little blue bird quite yet. But there is one thing we can do, and that’s help you download and back up your Twitter archive—most likely for free.

Whether you’re anti-Elon or you’re just worried that the folks who are good at building electric cars or spaceships might not know how to manage a social media algorithm, you can take a few easy steps to protect your treasured Twitter memories. Here’s how.

Downloading Your Twitter Data

The first step is to log in to your Twitter account on a web browser. Once logged in, click on the “More” section in the navigation bar. From there, a new navigation bar will appear. You should select the “Settings and Support” dropdown, followed by the “Settings and Privacy” tab to progress.

Under the “Your Account” section, you will find an area labeled “Download an archive of your data.” The function of this is pretty self-explanatory, but does lead to a further menu that allows you to request an archive of your Twitter data or Periscope data.

After requesting your archive you will receive a notification with a link when your archive is ready for download. This archive will consist of a ZIP file with data that Twitter has deemed most relevant or useful to you, including DMs, moments, profile media and any media you may have used in your Tweets such as gifs, photos, and videos.

Archive Your Twitter Data for Free

Once you download your Twitter data, you can then save a full archive copy in the cloud on Backblaze B2—for free if it’s under 10GB.

Click here to get started with Backblaze B2 Storage Cloud today.

Back Up Your Twitter Data (Not Free, But Super Easy)

In addition to an archive copy, it’s important to use a secure backup strategy so all of those Tweets and memories will be preserved and kept safe from accidental deletion, equipment failure, or disasters (whether they’re natural or Musk-made). This is where a 3-2-1 backup strategy comes in handy. Using a 3-2-1 approach means keeping one copy of your data locally, one copy on a different type of media like an external hard drive, and one off-site (the cloud is a great place to keep it!).

You’ll need to manually download your Twitter data periodically, but once you have it on your machine, you can ensure it’s backed up with Backblaze Computer Backup—it automatically backs up all of your files, including documents, photos, music, movies, and, yes, all of that Twitter data you downloaded.

Click here to sign up for a 15-day trial of Backblaze Computer Backup, and save those Tweets.

While You’re At It…

We’ve gathered a handful of guides to help you protect social content across many different platforms. We’re working on developing this list—please comment below if you’d like to see another platform covered.

The post How to Download and Back Up Your Twitter Account appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Messages and Files

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-back-up-and-restore-whatsapp-messages-and-files/

June is Backup Awareness Month and we’re kicking it off with the next installment in our series of guides to help you protect social content across many different platforms. We’re working on developing this list—please comment below if you’d like to see another platform covered.

Some of your most valuable digital assets are memories, scattered across the digital ether. For a lot of us, these mementoes of our meta life are tied up in one of Meta’s most popular apps, WhatsApp. The last group chat you had with old college friends. An inspiring note from a loved one. A funny meme that proves your weird uncle does, in fact, have a sense of humor. They’re all out there, drifting through the cloud.

These are treasured memories, and worth preserving, especially in the always uncertain world online. You might find yourself gravitating towards a new messaging app as the technology changes. You might get locked out of your account. It might even be that your country winds up banning the app. (So far, it’s only happened in places like Cuba and Uganda, and while those were temporary, the app was “temporarily” blocked in China in 2017 and is still blocked. The point being, you never know which way the wind is going to blow).

So obviously, it’s worth it to make sure you have some kind of backup for these treasured memories. Now it’s just a matter of creating those backups, and finding somewhere (or, more accurately, several somewheres) to securely store them.

How to Create Backups of Your WhatsApp Data

Back Up Individual Messages and Group Chats

By default, WhatsApp automatically archives your chats every day onto your device, with the option to back them up to Google Drive. As you’ll see, this is not quite sufficient if you really want to preserve those memories. To create a backup that you can preserve elsewhere, use the following steps:

  1. Tap the three vertical dots within an individual message or group chat.
  2. Tap More, and then Export Chat.
  3. You can then choose whether to export with or without media, with the most recent media being added as attachments.
  4. From here, you can choose how to share the attachments, which will consist of a .txt file as well as individual attachments for each piece of media in the chat.
Here we see it as a step-by-step guide, which also helpfully demonstrates the idiotic conversations the author has with his friends on WhatsApp.

Choose Your Backup Destination

We suggest downloading your backup to your device at this point. This step creates a local backup on your phone. From here, you can either download the attachment onto your computer from that same email, or connect your phone and make a copy from local storage onto your desktop. This will create two copies, but we’re just getting started.

Initiating Backup in 3…2…1…

As with anything you back up, the best strategy to employ is the classic 3-2-1 backup strategy. In essence, this is creating a trio of redundant copies, giving your backups their own backups in case anything should go wrong. Typically, you’ll want two copies stored on two different local devices and a third in the cloud.

Is this a little bit of overkill? Absolutely, and we mean that in the best possible way. You’ll thank us when a spilled cup of coffee doesn’t wipe out some of your favorite WhatsApp chats.

Backup #1: Local Storage (i.e., PC)

If you’ve followed the directions so far, you’ll now have a copy of your chats on your phone as well as on your desktop. This constitutes your first local copy.

Backup #2: Options

For your second local copy, you have a few options:

  1. Flash drive: Your computer is prone to any number of breakdowns, outages, or viruses that a flash drive simply isn’t, providing a safe, secondary, local place to store those all-important chats. As anyone who has ever accidentally sat on, stepped on, lost, or otherwise accidentally mutilated a flash drive can tell you, it’s not the end-all-be-all solution. However, having this redundant safety measure could be the thing that saves you from losing your data forever.
  2. External hard drive: An external hard drive is another good option to house a second copy of your data, and we know a little bit about them—we monitor 203,168 hard drives used to store data in our data centers. If you’re new to using an external hard drive, check out this handy guide.
  3. SSD: Like flash and hard drives, external SSDs are another form of external storage you can use to keep backup copies of your data. If you really want to get into the weeds on external storage, check out our guide on the difference between SSD vs. NVMe vs. M.2 drives.

Backup #3: Cloud Storage

We’ll admit to being a bit biased here, but for true peace of mind that your backups will survive any number of disasters and mishaps, you have to incorporate cloud storage into your 3-2-1 solution. (If for no other reason than without it, you have a 2-1 situation which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. But believe us, there are plenty of other reasons, mainly so you don’t lose your data when your computer suddenly dies or you drop your flash drive down the sewer.)

If you are one of the millions of extraordinarily clever people who use Backblaze Personal Backup, this might just be the easiest step in the process because it’s all done automatically. Simply by having your WhatsApp backups on your computer, you’ll rest easy knowing that the software is one step ahead of you, storing your chats and online memories safely in the cloud.

If space is limited locally, and you don’t necessarily need the WhatsApp files on your own computer, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage gives you plenty of space in the cloud to stash them until they’re needed. Paired with local copies elsewhere, you could also use this method to achieve a 3-2-1 strategy without taking up a huge amount of space locally on your machine.

Bonus Pro Tips: Transferring Your WhatsApp Data to a New Phone

While it’s all well and good to have your data securely tucked away using the 3-2-1 strategy, what happens when you get a new phone and want to have easy access through the app to all of your old chats? When that happens, you’re going to be glad you squirreled it away, and thrilled that we’ve outlined step-by-step how to get your new phone up and running with all of your old memories intact.

How to Restore Your Backup to an Android Phone

Restoring your WhatsApp backup to an Android phone takes a few steps. In these steps, we will assume you have reinstalled WhatsApp on your new phone.

  1. Install a file manager app on your Android phone.
  2. Copy the backup file to your Android phone.
  3. Open the file manager app.
  4. Copy the backup file to WhatsApp > Databases.
  5. Remember to restore the most recently created backup file to the device’s Databases folder.
  6. Restore your WhatsApp backup from local storage.

How to Restore Your Backup to an iPhone

The restore process for WhatsApp on an iPhone is similar. We will assume you do not have WhatsApp installed with the Android steps.

  1. Connect your iPhone to your computer.
  2. Open iTunes.
  3. Back up your iPhone using iTunes. This step will create a WhatsApp backup (along with your other phone data) to your computer.
  4. Back up your iTunes backup to the cloud. Backing up your iTunes data to a cloud storage service is advisable because your PC’s local storage might fail. For detailed guidance, see our post: “A Quick Guide to iCloud and iTunes Backups for Your iPhone and iPad.”
  5. Restore data to your iPhone using iTunes. Restoring your WhatsApp data to your iPhone is simple. Connect your iPhone to the computer where you ran the backup. Open iTunes and use the “restore a backup” feature.

Keep Your WhatsApp Archive Safe

When it comes to your digital assets, backups matter. Even the most mundane conversations you engage in on WhatsApp now might end up being a treasured memory of old friends later on. Preserving them is important, and if you’ve followed these steps and backed up your memories to your computer and to the cloud, you’ll have those memories available at a moment’s notice wherever you are.

The post How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Messages and Files appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Back Up Yahoo and AOL Data

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-back-up-yahoo-and-aol-data/

In case you missed it, we recently showed you how to back up your old email accounts, focusing on Outlook emails and Gmail. But what of those of us who remember the Wild Wild West days of the internet? Some of us have decades worth of emails gathering digital dust in AOL and Yahoo inboxes, and we want to back those up as well.

Let’s go through preserving these vintage emails with a little walk down memory lane.
The year was 1994. The White House had just launched its very first website; Katie Couric was famously asking, “What is the internet?” on the “Today” show; and everywhere, there was the sense that this so-called “information superhighway” might just be here to stay.

And one blog writer had just signed up for his very first America Online email address. Lured by the promises contained within each CD that arrived in his mailbox and welcomed to the digital ether by the screeching cacophony of a blazing fast 14.4K modem, he began his journey on the internet.

Looking back on those times now, I’m suddenly realizing what a time capsule I inadvertently created in my AOL inbox. The first emails I ever sent to high school friends after they went to college. Those first awkward exchanges between myself and my wife. My first dozen or so rejection letters from employers as I entered the “real world.” All locked up behind a password that I set when I was just 14.

These memories are too precious to trust to my AOL inbox, so as I look back on my digital life so far, I realize I need to preserve those moments in a backup I can trust. Join me, as I back up both my AOL and Yahoo accounts, savoring the embarrassing memories along the way.

How to Back Up Your Digital Life

Check out our series of guides to help you protect content across many different platforms—including social media, sync services, and more. This list is always a work in progress—please comment below if you’d like to see another platform covered.

How to Download Yahoo Data

We’ll start with my Yahoo Account, which should be easy since I only ever used this email address as a way to sign up for things online that I didn’t necessarily want tied to my main inbox. And since the message board for fans of the FX drama “The Shield” that I signed up for with this address has long since folded, my inbox currently sits empty. (It’s even free of spam, which is pretty impressive.)

So, I’ll simply send myself an email from an address I do use to get the ball rolling.

All I need to do is send myself my credit card number to secure my lottery winnings!

Step One: Finding Your Data

All of your Yahoo data can be found in your Privacy Dashboard, which can be tricky to find using the menus Yahoo offers, so we’ll just cut to the chase and give you the link.

This page gives you a few options, but when it comes to your inbox, it’s not as straightforward as simply downloading an MBOX file. Yahoo only gives you the option of configuring an Outlook, Mac Mail, or Thunderbird inbox using IMAP, downloading all of your data to a third-party app which you can then use to store your emails as files.

You can also use the links on the previous screen to download individual elements of your Yahoo account, from contacts and email preferences to usage and activity. However, Yahoo forces you to send a request to download this data, which they warn can take up to 30 days.

Two emails?! Look at Mr. Popularity over here.

Step Two: Getting Your Data

Your mileage may vary, but the gist of what you want to do here is to set your third-party inbox to download and store your Yahoo emails. To do that, simply configure your IMAP settings to:

Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server
Server: export.imap.mail.yahoo.com
Port: 993
Requires SSL: Yes

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server
Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
Port: 465 or 587
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires authentication: Yes

Every email client is different, but if you’re using Outlook you can find the steps to download your emails in our previous post.

How to Download AOL Data

Much to my dismay, when I logged onto my AOL account I found that all of my old emails, nearly 30 years of correspondence, were simply gone. Ah well, it’s hard to blame AOL for clearing up some space. After all, by my reckoning it had been at least 10 years since I opened this inbox. But it certainly underscores the need for backups, right?

My high school friends may not email me anymore, but the spammers do. The spammers never forget about me.

Regardless, I do have 130 emails in there so I can at least walk you through how you’d go about downloading them. Now there is always the print to PDF method, outlined in our previous post, which would certainly work here for individual emails. But if you’re looking to do a mass backup, fortunately you are not alone. Enough people have faced the same situation that a company called SysTools created an app specifically for backing up AOL emails.

Simply download the app, then either log in using your AOL credentials or by generating a one-time app password from your Account Security settings. The free version of the software will back up 100 emails, but you can purchase a license for $49 if you need to back up more. Whichever works for you, once you’re in, you’ll have four different email file formats to choose from: .EML, .MSG, .MBOX or .PST. You can also choose to save your emails as PDFs so they can be viewed across platforms.

Ah, all those precious memories, preserved forever.

And now we have all the emails in our inbox, saved on our computer in whichever file format floats our inbox, and we’re ready to move on to the next step. Your computer is just as fallible as AOL, and probably more so, so it’s time to move these into the cloud.

Backing Up Emails: To Sync or Not?

Now that we’ve rescued our emails from the digital ether, it’s time to put them somewhere a little more secure. If you use an automated backup service like Backblaze Personal Backup (and let’s be honest, you should), then it will be a pretty straightforward process consisting of two steps:

Step one: Do nothing.

Step two: Continue to do nothing, because Backblaze Personal Backup already did it for you.

Pretty easy, right?

If you want to keep archival data on the computer you use every day, you can of course use Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage to archive data. Check out our post here for all the nitty-gritty.

The post How to Back Up Yahoo and AOL Data appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

How to Download and Back Up YouTube Videos

Post Syndicated from Barry Kaufman original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-download-and-back-up-youtube-videos/

We like to think of our YouTube videos as being eternal, that somehow once we upload this little clip of our life, it will remain there safe in its URL forever.

The fact is, nothing lasts forever online except for those embarrassing pictures someone posted of you 10 years ago and the 1996 Space Jam website. Content is deleted every day, whether because a website shutters its operations or because the content gets caught up in the vagaries of copyright law. Your YouTube videos are no different.

If you’ve got a bunch of content living on YouTube and nowhere else, it’s time to download and back up your videos so you can control your content’s digital fate. In this post, learn how to download videos from YouTube and make sure they’re backed up safely.

How to Back Up Your Digital Life

Check out our series of guides to help you protect content across many different platforms—including social media, sync services, and more. This list is always a work in progress—please comment below if you’d like to see another platform covered.

Why Back Up Your YouTube Videos?

Aside from the simple fact that having a solid data backup plan can help you avoid the fallout from all manner of tragedies like hardware loss, theft, or damage, keeping your YouTube videos backed up protects you from the ups and downs of an ever-changing YouTube ecosystem. Google’s side project has a bit of a troubled history of deleting videos without the owner’s knowledge or consent. After all, when you have terms of service that border on labyrinthine, enforced by an algorithm to strip spam, fraud, hate speech, copyright infringement, and all manner of ickiness from 30,000 hours of video uploaded every hour, there are bound to be some casualties.

So how can you protect your precious memories from being dissolved in the digital ether? How can you ensure that your skillfully edited masterpiece doesn’t become a casualty of the algorithm? What if, let’s just say for example, you went up in a biplane one time and the camera on which you filmed this adventure has long been lost to the scrap heap of your junk drawer? What if a YouTube video is the only evidence you have of that time you forgot you had a cargo topper on your minivan and almost wrecked at the Mall of America? Hypothetically speaking?

The answer? Just as you upload the video to YouTube, it’s time to back it up both locally and in the cloud. And if you have a whole library of videos on YouTube, it’s time to download them so you can back those up, too.

A Short History of Downloading YouTube Content

There was a time not too long ago when downloading YouTube videos, even your own, meant delving into some of the darker corners of the internet. Often hosted on foreign servers to avoid Digital Millennium Copyright Act enforcement, these sites still exist. But now there’s a far easier native solution for downloading your content.

While they have done their level best to obscure this option, it’s right there for anyone to use. Just follow these simple steps below.

How to Download YouTube Videos

First, open the YouTube Creator Studio. YouTube Creator Studio is a terrific tool the site offers for managing your videos, customizing your channel, viewing analytics, and even monetizing your content. It’s also pretty well hidden, for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious.

To access YouTube Creator Studio on a desktop, click the hamburger menu at the top left of your screen and select “Your Videos.”

In this screenshot, my subscriptions have been blurred so you don’t judge me.

This will bring you to the content page of YouTube, with all of your cinematic achievements laid out before you. Select the video you want, click the kebab menu (the three vertical dots), and then select download. It’s just that easy!

If you’re curious, the video below the one I’m downloading is my dog riding an invisible bicycle.

You can also select multiple videos, click more actions, and download your videos.

Downloading Your Videos on Mobile

To download your videos on mobile, use your phone’s “phone” function to call up someone who has a desktop computer because YouTube Creator on mobile doesn’t let you download videos.

Backing Up Your Videos

Now that you’ve saved all of these videos from being potentially lost forever, how do you make sure they’re stored safely? By saving them locally, you haven’t really addressed the problem that they could be easily lost. Your computer and your external hard drives are, after all, probably more susceptible to data loss than YouTube is.

Which brings us to the 3-2-1 cloud backup strategy. Make sure to have three copies of your data on two different media (read: devices) with one stored off-site (typically in the cloud). Having two backups of your newly downloaded data on-site helps you recover quickly if you ever lose those videos you spent time capturing. And storing a copy in the cloud keeps one copy of your data geographically separated from the others in case of a major disaster like hardware loss, theft, or damage. But how you plan on using these videos will have an impact on which cloud storage method you pick.

If you want to keep copies of your YouTube archive locally, Backblaze Personal Backup is your best bet. It runs silently in the background of your computer. As soon as those YouTube videos hit your hard drive, it will automatically begin backing them up to the cloud, giving you a local copy and a copy on the cloud. If you create a second local copy on an external hard drive, you’re fully backed up and following a good 3-2-1 strategy.

If space is limited locally, and you don’t necessarily need the files on your own computer, Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage gives you plenty of space in the cloud to stash them until they’re needed. Say, when you have to prove to someone that you went up in a biplane that one time. Paired with local copies elsewhere, you could also use this method to achieve a 3-2-1 strategy without taking up a huge amount of space on your machine.

Do you have any techniques on how you download your data from YouTube or other social sites? Share them in the comments section below!

The post How to Download and Back Up YouTube Videos appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.