In the field of backup, there is a classic principle called the 3-2-1 rule.

Three copies of data. On two different types of media. One of them is outside the house. The logic becomes clear when thinking about the causes of loss. One copy on the laptop disappears with the laptop. Two copies on a laptop and an external drive in the same apartment disappear with the apartment. Therefore, the third copy should be physically elsewhere, and the easiest option here is cloud storage. For most people, the working scheme looks like this: files on a phone or computer, a copy on an external disk or flash drive, a copy in the cloud.

What to copy first

Order by priority, because few people will do everything at once.

  1. Passport or ID card on both sides, foreign passport, birth certificate, identification code
  2. Ownership of housing, sales contracts, technical passport, car documents
  3. Marriage, divorce, birth of children, name change certificates
  4. Diplomas, certificates, work book, certificates
  5. Discharges, results of examinations, vaccinations of children, prescriptions for permanent drugs
  6. Contracts with banks, insurance policies, credit agreements
  7. Photos & Videos

How to make copies correctly

Scan or take pictures in good light, without shadows or glare. The document must lie flat, and all four corners must fall into the frame. The format is better than PDF, not JPG. PDF allows you to combine a multi-page document into one file and is better perceived by institutions.

Resolution from 300 dpi. The lower one may not be enough when you need to read something from the copy. Name files clearly. Instead of IMG_20260904, Passport_Ivanov_page1 is better. In a year, you won't remember where. Make a simple folder structure by category. Search by name only works when the names are understood. A phone is enough to scan. Built-in applications on iPhone and Android recognize document boundaries and align images automatically.

The action is not a backup

A moment that should be understood clearly, because a false sense of security is built on it. Documents in the Action application have the same legal force as paper documents, and retail chains, post offices and banks can officially accept digital documents. Through Diya.QR, you can create a copy of the document and send it to the mail. At the same time, Diya does not keep your documents with her. The application displays data from state registers, so access depends on the operation of the registers and the availability of the Internet. There are also restrictions on the types of documents. Book passports of the 1994 model and non-biometric foreign passports issued before 2015 are not displayed in the Action, so it is impossible to share their copies. The practical conclusion is as follows. The action is convenient for daily use, but it does not replace your own archive. Make copies separately. Useful action right now: generate copies of your digital documents through Action.QR and save the received PDF files to your archive. They are signed with an electronic signature, that is, they have more weight than a regular photo.

Where to store

Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox. Free volumes are usually enough for documents, and you will have to pay for the photo archive. The main advantage is that the data does not depend on the physical condition of your devices.

External disk or flash drive. Cheap and completely under your control. The downside is that the media may fail, so one flash drive is not considered a backup copy.

The second device. The old phone, which lies in the drawer, is quite suitable as an additional storage place.

Paper copies. Don't despise them. Printed copies of key documents in a separate folder work when there is neither light nor communication.

The optimal combination for most is a cloud plus a flash drive that is not at home. For example, at parents, relatives in another city or at work.

About copy security

A passport scan in an unsecured cloud storage creates a separate risk. A set of personal data allows you to apply for a loan, register a company or use your identity in a fraudulent scheme. Do not store documents in the phone gallery together with ordinary photos. Applications access the gallery and you rarely control which ones. Do not send scans of documents in messengers to yourself. This is the most common practice and one of the worst, because the history of correspondence is stored on servers and available when the account is hacked. Compile documents in an archive with a password before uploading to the cloud. This is done by the full-time means of archivers and takes a minute. Enable two-factor authentication on the account where the archive lies. I wrote about how it works and why mail is the key to everything in the account security story. Do not give applications access to the entire gallery if they need one photo.

The photo archive deserves special attention

Documents are restored, although this takes time. Photos of childhood are never restored.

The most common mistake is that people consider automatic synchronization with the cloud as a backup. Synchronization is not a copy, because what is deleted on the phone is also deleted in the cloud. Similarly, a hacked account means losing everything at once. Therefore, a separate copy is required for the photo archive, which is not automatically synchronized. Once a year, reset the photo from the past period to the external disk and leave it alone. A separate category is paper photos of older generations. They degrade physically, and the longer digitization is delayed, the worse the quality. Scanning the album takes the evening and there is no alternative. And one piece of advice that those who have not followed it regret. Sign who is shown in the old photos while you have someone to ask. In twenty years, there will be no people who remember faces.

Access for loved ones

If something happens to you, your family should have access to the documents. An archive encrypted with a password that only you know is useless in such a scenario. Solution options: password manager with emergency access function, envelope with passwords in a safe place, trusted person who knows where what is lying. It is enough that at least one loved one knows about the existence of the archive and can reach it.

If the documents are already lost

Available copies and scanned copies help with recovery, and digital documents from Diya are also accepted as analogues of paper ones. For most documents, the way lies through the TsNAP with the payment of an administrative fee. For real estate documents, a notary and BTI are connected, and if it is impossible to get a duplicate, you will have to apply to the court with a claim for recognition of ownership. With diplomas, the situation depends on the year of issue. If the diploma was issued before 2000 and there are no data either in the state database or in the archives of the university, the presence of education is proven in court, using any evidence such as entries in the labor book.

Summary

Backup belongs to those things, the value of which becomes obvious only at the moment when it is too late to do it. Documents can be recovered by spending months on instances. Photos are not restored. Therefore, it is worth starting with them, and adding the rest gradually. The main thing to remember: a copy that lies in the same apartment as the original is not counted as a copy.


Sources: Action, Ministry of Digital Transformation, Tribune. Amounts, Prohibition