Short answer: yes, if the machine still turns on. Not because we’re careless with your data — we’re not — but because a backup you already have is worth more than any promise anybody can make you.

We do back-ups here as part of a job ($149, or $279 bundled with a Windows reload). If you’d rather we handled it, say so at drop-off and we will. This guide is for people who’d like to have their own copy as well, which is always the better position to be in.

Why it matters more than people think

Two situations come up constantly:

A reload wipes the drive. If the honest fix for your machine is a clean Windows install, everything on it goes. We’ll always tell you before that happens and we’ll back it up for you if you want — but if you already have a copy, that conversation gets a lot less stressful.

A dying drive can go from “slow” to “gone” without warning. If your computer is running strangely, the drive is one of the more likely culprits, and a drive that’s on the way out doesn’t usually give you a second chance. The best time to copy your files off is while it’s still limping.

The ten-minute version

You don’t need software and you don’t need to understand any of it. Plug in a USB stick or an external drive, open your Documents, Pictures, Desktop and Downloads folders, and drag the contents across.

That covers the overwhelming majority of what people would be upset to lose.

If you have more time, also grab:

Anything saved somewhere unusual — a folder on the D: drive, an old work directory
Email files if you use a desktop mail program rather than webmail
Game saves, if that would ruin your week
Anything in a folder you set up yourself years ago and forgot about

The better version, if you have a moment

Cloud storage does this continuously and doesn’t depend on you remembering.

Windows: OneDrive is already built in. Open it from the taskbar, sign in with a Microsoft account, and tick Desktop, Documents and Pictures. It’ll start uploading in the background.

Mac: iCloud Drive, under System Settings then your name.

Either: Google Drive works fine on both if you’d rather.

The free tiers are small, but they’re usually enough for documents and the photos that matter. Photos are what people actually cry about — everything else can be reinstalled.

What we can’t back up

If the machine won’t turn on, there’s nothing you can do at home, and that’s fine — that’s what data recovery is for. Bring it in, tell us the data is the priority, and we’ll work in that order. Standard recovery is $199 with a $79 attempt fee, and that fee is the most you’ll pay if it can’t be done.

Don’t keep trying to power it on in the hope it catches. On a failing drive, every attempt makes the next one less likely.

Tell us what matters

The single most useful thing you can do at drop-off is say which folder actually matters. “The photos” or “there’s a folder called Accounts on the desktop” changes how we approach the job entirely.

We can’t tell what’s precious just by looking at it — a folder full of holiday photos and a folder full of installers look identical from the outside.

And if you’ve been meaning to sort this out for years

You’re in extremely good company. Roughly nobody has a proper backup until something goes wrong once — after which they usually have three.

Get the photos onto a USB stick today. That’s genuinely the whole homework. The rest can wait for a rainy afternoon that, let’s be honest, may never arrive.