All help articles

Choosing a destination

MomentBackup backs up to storage you own. Each kind has a sweet spot.

External drive

The simplest and fastest option. Format the drive, plug it in, pick it during setup. Backups run whenever the drive is connected; if it’s unplugged, MomentBackup simply waits and tells you how long it’s been since the last backup.

Network drive (NAS or shared folder)

The set-and-forget option — backups run on schedule without anything plugged in. Enter the share address (for example smb://nas.local/Backups) or pick a discovered share. Your share credentials are stored in the operating system’s secure store — the macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, or the Linux Secret Service — never in a plain file. Before each scheduled run, MomentBackup reconnects the share itself; if the share is genuinely unreachable, the backup fails clearly rather than writing somewhere wrong.

MomentBackup uses the same kind of SMB share as the backup built into a Mac and keeps its data in a separate space, so one NAS can serve both backup tools side by side.

On Windows, whole-computer images can use a local or external drive, or a connected NAS.

Cloud storage

An off-site File History copy that survives fire, theft, and flood. You can use Google Drive or your own S3-compatible bucket. You bring the account or bucket and pay the provider directly at their rates; access keys and tokens are stored in the OS secure store. Cloud destinations do not store whole-computer images.

Turn encryption on for cloud destinations. MomentBackup will warn you before sending unencrypted backups to a bucket — your provider should be storing ciphertext, not your files.

Still stuck? Email [email protected] and include what you were doing and what you expected.