Backing up 1Password data

Regular backups are important for all your data, but they’re critical for your Logins, Credit Cards, Secure Notes, and other information stored in 1Password. When starting over after a catastrophe, having easy access to your 1Password data on an up-to-date backup up will allow you to get up and running faster.

It’s important to know, then, that backing up the 1Password application does not back up your 1Password data—that’s stored separately from the application itself.

1Password automatically creates a backup of your 1Password data every day, keeping up to 50 backups at a time in a folder under your Windows user account directory. You can change the frequency, number, and storage location of your backups on the Backup tab of 1Password preferences.

You can also create a backup anytime you like by choosing Backup > Back Up 1Password Data.

In case of a complete drive failure or other catastrophe, you’ll want to have an external backup of your 1Password data and, ideally, those backups, too.

You can copy all the files to an external hard drive or a USB flash drive; you can put them under the automatic control of an online backup or sync service. Note that the Dropbox sync solution includes retention of your data for up to 30 days, in addition to the copies of your current 1Password data that exist on other sync’ed computers. This redundancy makes Dropbox even more useful.