Short answer: keep your designs in one place, then keep two copies of that place — one on an external drive you can hold, and one somewhere off-site like a cloud folder. Do the first copy today even if it is messy; a rough backup beats a perfect plan you never started. Here is how to set it up in about twenty minutes, and how to get everything back if you ever need to.
What you are actually protecting
People think of a backup as protection against a dead computer. That is one case, and not the most common one. The everyday ones are duller:
- An update runs overnight and your file locations change
- A drive fills up and you tidy the wrong folder
- You replace a laptop and half the collection does not make the trip
- A USB stick stops being recognized
And what is at stake is bigger than it looks. A few hundred designs at four or five dollars each is well over a thousand dollars of purchases, plus the evenings you spent finding and sorting them. Most people are insuring a machine worth less than their design collection.
Step one: get everything into one place
Backing up is simple once there is a single folder to back up. Right now your designs are probably in Downloads, on a USB stick, in email and on an old machine.
Make one folder — call it Embroidery Designs — and copy everything into it. Not organized, just gathered. Sorting can happen later; scattering is what costs you.
To find everything first, here is the method. Search for the file types rather than names, and remember to search for zip files separately.
Copy rather than move while you are gathering. If something goes wrong halfway, the originals are still where they were.
Step two: two copies, two places
The rule that has survived every era of computing: keep more than one copy, and do not keep them all in the same building.
Copy one: an external drive
A plain external hard drive or a large USB stick. Plug it in, copy the folder across, unplug it, put it in a drawer. That is the whole job.
Repeat it whenever you have bought enough new designs to mind losing them. For most people that is monthly.
Copy two: somewhere off-site
A cloud folder — the free tier of most services is enough for embroidery designs, since stitch files are small. Put your Embroidery Designs folder inside it and it keeps itself up to date.
Off-site matters because the two risks nobody plans for are theft and water. A backup drive next to the computer solves neither.
Step three: check it once
The step everyone skips. A backup nobody has tested is a hope.
Open the backup, pick a design at random, copy it back to the desktop and open it. If it opens, your backup works. Do this once, today, and then you can stop thinking about it.
What else to keep, beyond the designs
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your fonts and alphabets | Often bought separately and stored elsewhere. Easy to miss. |
| Color charts and PDFs from design packs | The thread numbers live here, and they are gone if the shop closes. |
| Purchase emails and license files | Proof of purchase, and what you are allowed to sell. |
| Your own finished files | Customer work you edited or lettered. Usually irreplaceable. |
| Software license codes | So a reinstall is an afternoon and not a week. |
If your software can do it for you
Some library software will back up your whole collection to a single file and restore it on another computer, catalog and all — so you get back not just the designs but the organizing you did.
Our own Unzip2Stitch has that, and it is there because of a customer whose computer died. We rebuilt most of her collection from our own order records. Most is not all, and the part we could not rebuild was the work she had done herself.
Whatever you use, the principle holds: the designs are replaceable if you have the receipts, but the sorting, naming and lettering you did on top of them is not.
Getting it back
On a new computer, the order is: copy the folder back first, then reinstall your software, then point the software at the folder. Doing it the other way round means the software scans an empty place and you get to do it twice.
If you have a catalog backup from your library program, restore that after the software is installed, and your organizing comes back with it.
Questions people ask
How often should I back up?
After any batch of purchases you would mind losing. Monthly suits most people. A cloud folder handles it continuously without you remembering.
Is a USB stick enough?
As one of the two copies, yes. Not as the only one — sticks fail without warning and are easy to lose.
Can I just rely on the shop letting me re-download?
Partly. Many shops keep purchases available indefinitely, but not all, and shops close. It also does nothing for designs you edited or lettered yourself.
My designs are on the machine’s USB stick. Is that a backup?
No. That is a working copy, and it usually holds only what you stitched recently.
What if I have thousands of files?
Stitch files are small — several thousand designs is usually only a few gigabytes. Size is rarely the obstacle.
Keep reading
How to find a design you already bought · Why embroidery files show as blank icons · How to open a zipped embroidery file · Embroidery file formats explained