Safety first: Easy ways to back up content on your Lumia

We keep a lot of important info on our smartphones, so as a safety measure, here’s how to back up your Lumia or other smartphone running Windows Phone 8.1.

There are different ways to back up your media files, contacts and SMS and other essential settings. Let’s take a look:

First, you can automatically save important stuff to the cloud by turning on the “backup” service on your Lumia. Head to “Settings,” tap “Backup” and choose what you want to save: apps and settings, text messages, or photos and videos.

That way, whenever you get a new Lumia such as the Lumia 640 or the Lumia 640 XL, it’s super easy to re-capture the content from your previous smartphone.

contacts+message backup: This free, updated app enables you to back up your contacts in VCF format and SMS and MMS messages to your phone’s SD card.

Once you install this app, it will appear in your Settings menu. Your backed-up content is stored in the ‘backup+restore’ folder on the SD card.

Please note that this app won’t work on Lumia phones that don’t have an SD card, such as the Lumia Icon and Lumia 930. 

Transfer my Data: Copy all your contacts on your old Lumia to your new Windows Phone in seconds with the Transfer my Data app.

To start, activate Bluetooth on both devices and pair them. Now, open the app and follow its on-screen instructions. As a note, some Lumia smartphones are also capable of transferring text messages and pictures.

Back up content on desktop and OneDrive

To back up content such as music, videos, and podcasts to your desktop computer, you can use the Windows Phone app for desktop or Windows Phone app for Mac.

And of course, you can back up your music, documents, movies, emails and pretty much everything else onto OneDrive. You get at least 15GB of free storage and if you’re an Office 365 subscriber, say hello to one full terabyte of storage.

What methods do you use to keep your data always within reach? Let us know in the comments section below.