Community Stories & Tips

Backup Like a Squirrel: Hide Your Digital Food Before Disaster Strikes

I once watched a story set during the War of Resistance. In the bitter cold of Rehe, an elderly veteran of the Anti-Japanese United Army was hiding in a cave with his family, recovering from wounds while evading enemy searches. With the mountain passes blocked by heavy snow, food became critically scarce. His daughter-in-law bravely volunteered to venture down the mountain for supplies. After a whole day, she finally returned, carrying a bundle of firewood and a heavy sack of nuts on her shoulder—pine nuts and chestnuts—enough to solve everyone's hunger problem. The veteran was astonished: "Where did you find so many chestnuts?" She smiled and replied, "I grew up in these mountains. I know that squirrels hide their food in tree hollows before winter. I just followed their tracks and found their secret stash."

From Guilt to Peace of Mind:A Software Vendor's Journey of Data Protection

I once watched a story set during the War of Resistance.In the bitter cold of Rehe, an elderly veteran of the Anti-Japanese United Army was hiding in a cave with his family, recovering from wounds while evading enemy searches. With the mountain passes blocked by heavy snow, food became critically scarce. His daughter-in-law bravely volunteered to venture down the mountain for supplies. After a whole day, she finally returned, carrying a bundle of firewood and a heavy sack of nuts on her shoulder—pine nuts and chestnuts—enough to solve everyone's hunger problem.The veteran was astonished: "Where did you find so many chestnuts?" She smiled and replied, "I grew up in these mountains. I know that squirrels hide their food in tree hollows before winter. I just followed their tracks and found their secret stash."

How I Back Up My Small Business Logs

We generate about 2GB of system logs daily. Instead of paying for cloud storage with encryption keys and compliance forms, we use SquirrelBak to send logs every night to a locked PC at our manager’s home. The setup took 10 minutes. Now we sleep better knowing our audit trail is safe, offline, and under our control.

Pro tip: Use a dedicated user account on the Receiver PC and disable remote login — keeps it secure and silent.

“It saved my photo archive” — By Sarah L.

As a travel photographer, I shoot thousands of RAW files a month. I run SquirrelBak from my editing PC to an old desktop in my garage. Last week, my SSD failed during export. I didn’t lose a single photo. The backup was complete and up to date.

I configured it to ignore cache folders and prioritize only /Photos/YYYY/MM. It uses almost no CPU. Peace of mind, one folder at a time.

“It saved my photo archive” — By Sarah L.

As a travel photographer, I shoot thousands of RAW files a month. I run SquirrelBak from my editing PC to an old desktop in my garage. Last week, my SSD failed during export. I didn’t lose a single photo. The backup was complete and up to date.

I configured it to ignore cache folders and prioritize only /Photos/YYYY/MM. It uses almost no CPU. Peace of mind, one folder at a time.

“Now Our SaaS Data Is Truly Protected” — By Mr. Xiong, Product Lead at 4sSoft Solutions

We run a SaaS platform for car dealerships across China — managing sales, service, and CRM data in SQL Server on Alibaba Cloud. While cloud backup helps, I never felt fully safe from ransomware or accidental deletion.

I set up a 4-step automated process using a simple batch script:

1. Auto-backup SQL Server databases nightly
2. Compress .bak files into password-protected RAR archives
3. Delete archive files older than 7 days
4. Use SquirrelBak to silently sync the latest backup to an offline PC in our office

It runs every night without touch. No extra cost. No cloud dependency. If anything happens to our cloud instance, we still have a secure, local copy — air-gapped and under our control.

Is it perfect? Yes. Simple, reliable, and silent. Just how backups should be.

The Idea Behind SquirrelBak — By SquirrelBak Team

SquirrelBak was born from a simple belief:

As office workers ourselves, we’ve seen too many preventable losses:

• Files encrypted by ransomware with no way to recover;
• Weeks of work lost forever due to hard drive failure;
• Non-technical colleagues left helpless, unsure how to back up even their most critical documents;
• Sensitive business data exposed, unsecured, and at risk—simply because backup felt “too technical.”

Most small teams don’t have IT staff.
They shouldn’t have to become victims of cyberattacks just because they lack expertise.

Data security must not be a privilege of the tech-savvy.
It should be so simple that anyone—auditors, accountants, admins, founders—can use it without training.

That’s why we built SquirrelBak:
A simple, reliable, and continuous backup tool that runs silently in your own network—no cloud, no complexity, no cost.

Because protecting what matters shouldn’t require a manual.
It should just… work.