3-2-1 rule of backups and why you should follow it

As one smart person said, there are two types of people: those who have already faced data loss and those who are just about to. And the same person, photographer Peter Crouch, formulated the main thing for data storage, which will allow you to avoid this unpleasant situation: the 3-2-1 rule.

Why backups are critical for your Shopify business

To create a Shopify store that is loved by customers and brings profit, you need to invest a lot of effort and time. You also accumulate valuable assets like products, themes, and customer and order data while developing your business. All of this you may lose at one moment due to an employee's mistake or external malicious interference.

Shopify users often think the platform backs up their stores. But Shopify only saves copies of the site as a whole in case of global crashes. They do not provide store owners with access to these backups; hence, you will not be able to use them for recovery if your account or part of the data is accidentally deleted. Shopify policies claim you should protect your store's data by yourself.

By installing the BackupMaster app, you can count on your store to be backed up daily, and you will be able to restore it in bulk and undo individual changes to the items in a few clicks. In addition, we provide the Export feature for downloading backups in a convenient .zip archive format.

Why Exporting?

You may be surprised that we offer our clients to download backups to their hard drives. However, it's important to note that we store your data encrypted on highly secure Microsoft cloud servers, and you can access this data for recovery anytime and from anywhere in the world. While we take every measure to ensure the security of your data, no data storage can be relied on 100 percent. Therefore, we are strongly committed to protecting our clients' business and ensuring that their data is always safe and secure.

 Just one of the possible situations is that if Shopify decides to close your store, then at the same time, you will lose access to our app. But if before, with the help of our app, you downloaded a backup copy of your account data, you can restore it easily.

The 3-2-1 principle of data storage

This is exactly what the golden rule of backups 3-2-1 says: store data in at least three(3) places: on two(2) different media with one(1) copy off-site for disaster recovery. 

In our case, two data copies can be stored in different cloud vaults, and one is on your hard drive. 

The first copy is your production data, and the two others are backup copies. The production data is stored on Shopify cloud servers. Shopify protects their (and yours) data from global crashes. This situation is rare enough, and most likely, if something like this happens, Shopify will be able to restore the regular operation of the site and all its stores reasonably quickly. 

If something terrible happens to your account exclusively, for example, an incompatible third-party app will bring chaos to your store data or an incompetent employee will delete the wrong product, the backup app will help you. You can cancel all unnecessary changes or rewind the account in bulk to the previous version at any time. This convenience allows you to confidently develop your business by making the necessary changes and trying something new. True peace of mind!

A copy of the data archive stored on the hard drive, on the other hand, provides you with independence from the hosting platform. If something happens to Shopify, your business data will not sink into oblivion. Also, the ability to download and upload saved data archives opens up other exciting possibilities, which you can read about in this article. The main thing is not to forget to update the current copies of the account regularly.

Conclusion

By installing a backup app to your store, you’ve done an important step to protect your Shopify business. Data deletion and corruption become a significant problem for many small and medium-sized stores daily, incurring enormous losses. Data is too valuable an asset to be taken lightly to protect it.

Storing data on multiple media at once provides a high level of protection. You can sleep peacefully knowing that if something unexpected happens, you will always be able to restore your account and its items from the saved backup. Using all available methods ensures your business is protected from unnecessary troubles.