At Gateway Computers, the protection of our customers data is always our first priority and the most important part of any repair. Before working on your device, we make sure we do a full backup of all data and then we make a second off-site backup for extra safety.
For Apple devices like iPhones, iPads etc., it is important that you do regular iCloud backups as well as a complete backup of your data to the iCloud service before bringing the device in for repair. Backing up you Apple product data to the iCloud is the only way to ensure that all your data can be moved back onto your device after repair. All other data backup options only backup a small portion of your data. If a proper iCloud backup has not been performed, a huge portion of your data will not be backed up and thus unrecoverable as the majority of your data can only be backed up via iCloud. It is therefore vitally important to do weekly or even daily iCloud backups, even if that requires paying for extra iCloud storage. In cases of severe damage where a recent iCloud backup has not been performed, we will do what we can to recover as much data as possible but some or all of the data may be lost if a proper iCloud backup has not or cannot be made. With any other brand of device, data recovery is less complicated and a full backup is usually possible, again, depending on how severe the damage is.
Some email programs such as the Windows 10 Mail App have no built-in import/export or backup/restore function and it is recommended that this app be avoided unless your ISP is using an IMAP Email server and is setup by you to save your contacts, calendar and emails on the server permanently. Otherwise, if using this app, backup of emails may not be possible. The only way to save your emails in this app is to open them one at a time and save them to an external drive as a PDF file. Any email attachments have to be saved separately. If you have hundreds or even thousand of emails, this could take hours to days to perform. We therefore recommend Mozilla Thunderbird for email if you don’t want to pay for Outlook or if you cannot setup your email account as an IMAP account where all data is saved on the email server. Thunderbird is a free open-source email client that is easier to backup when necessary. See our
Useful Links page for a download link of this and other useful, free software.