If you use a computer in your line of work, there’s a good chance that you keep many files that are important to carrying out your daily charge: documents, images, code, media, and maybe even a cat photo or three. If something goes wrong, you could lose all these things.

How can you ensure your digital stuff is going to be there when you need it? Implement a behind-the-scenes, continuous backup strategy.

Back up to an external hard drive

For starters, you can plug in an external hard drive and have your computer automatically back up to it. If you are on a Mac, you can use the built-in Time Machine which, in addition to backing up, will give you a nice history of your stuff. So you can go back a few days or a few weeks to recover individual files as they existed at that time.

But what if your desk spontaneously combusts or gets sucked through a portal into another dimension? Or, you know, normal things like theft or fire occur? You will have lost your computer and your backup. No fun.

Back up to a web service in the cloud

In addition to your onsite backup, you need to have an offsite backup. Services like Backblaze are great for this. They’ll run quietly in the background, continuously making backups over the Internet. These services typically have server space in multiple data centers with their own backups in place. This drastically increases your chances of data recovery in the event of even a major national disaster (yes, the zombies might get you, but at least you’ll have your data).

Sync important files between desktop and mobile devices

Now that you have backups in case of emergency, what about those non-emergency situations when you are away from your main computer and need some of your stuff? For quick access to oft-used files, you can’t beat Dropbox. It creates this magical shared folder that will appear on all of your devices. It’s worth grabbing the pro account and getting 1TB of storage. Stop worrying about whether you will have the right files with you and never EVER email a file to yourself again.

Protect your digital assets—both business and personal

While our work stuff is important, I would be remiss to overlook our personal data. We keep so much of our lives in digital form—our photos, thoughts, plans, and more. It’s just as worthwhile to back up these things. Cloud storage is relatively cheap these days, so it shouldn’t hit your wallet too hard. Back up all the things.

These three methods together—local backup drive, continuous over-the-air backup, and file sharing—virtually guarantee that if your computer flakes out, you accidentally delete something, or your cat decides that you no longer require your computer, you won’t get left in the cold. Nothing is 100% perfect, mind you, but not backing up anything is just plain dangerous. If you find setting up a redundant backup strategy like the one we’ve outlined here to be a daunting endeavor, that’s okay. Implement just one of the backup methods for now and you’ll be better off than with no backup at all.

One way we play it safe at Mad Genius when developing websites is by using Git, a version control system that can live in the cloud. Git not only gives us an extra backup, but a paper trail of revisions all throughout the development process. In the interactive department we backup our websites using Git.

Look, I like you. I don’t want to see you suffer from data loss. Friends don’t let friends lose data. So go ahead and do a favor for your future self and back up your stuff. Then have a cookie (if your browser allows cookies), because you deserve it.