If you’re sensitive to tech disasters, you might want to look away now: A recent Reddit thread tells the story of an unfortunate user who found 30 years of photos and work locked away and inaccessible in Microsoft OneDrive.

The individual made use of their cloud storage account to consolidate files from various hard drives, which had to be discarded due to a move. The plan was to then move the files back from OneDrive to new hard drives, but before the user was able to do this, their account was locked by Microsoft—without any reason given.

It’s still not clear why the account was locked or why Microsoft has so far ignored the user’s appeals to restore access, but it’s a warning to the rest of us—and a reminder to put a few basic protections and precautions in place.

Keep Multiple Backups

It used to be a truth universally acknowledged that data wasn’t properly backed up until it was backed up twice, in two separate locations. You can copy your important files to an external hard drive, but if it’s in the same room as your laptop, then theft, fire, or flood can wipe out both copies at the same time.

Today, having two backups of everything—so three copies in total—might seem excessive, as cloud storage services so rarely go down. We’ve all become used to the idea that the data we’ve logged with Microsoft, Google, Apple, or other providers is always going to be available, so we don’t need to worry about it.

What’s more, apps will often push you to keep all your original files in the cloud, and then be selective about what gets saved locally—you might see Google Photos offer to clear up space on your phone in this way, for example. If everything’s safely stored in the cloud, do you really need local copies too?

Well, yes, actually you do. Problems with cloud storage might be rare, but as our example above shows, cloud accounts can be locked, hacked, or hit by bugs, which means you need to store local copies of your files on as many devices as you can. There’s always the chance as well that you’ll inadvertently delete a swathe of cloud files without realizing it, which will again leave you relying on the files on your devices.

Ideally, you want to have your cloud drives syncing to at least two devices, preferably in separate locations. Even better, set up some kind of local storage backup to a hard drive or network drive in addition to whatever cloud storage protection you’ve put in place. You might even consider signing up for two cloud storage services, if you have the budget.

Here’s one example: In Dropbox, from the Preferences screen you can head to the Sync tab to manage how files are handled. The Online-only option will free up a lot of local hard drive space, but using the Available offline option means you can get at your files if you’re locked out of your Dropbox account or you lose your internet connection.

Protect Your Accounts

This is less directly related to the opening scenario mentioned above, because Microsoft has apparently locked the cloud account in question without any warning—there’s not a whole lot you can do about that in advance, but you can take other steps to minimize the risk of losing access in other ways.

This starts with choosing a strong username and password: The latter should be lengthy and impossible to guess. Ideally, you want to be using a password manager to manage all of your digital accounts, and you should also turn on two-step authentication wherever it’s offered (it’s available with most apps and services now). Do this and your username and password on their own won’t be enough to access your account.

It’s also important to double-check your backup and recovery options for your cloud accounts. This typically involves making sure details like backup email addresses and cell numbers are always up to date and active. You might need to rely on them if you can’t get into your accounts and get at your files in the normal way.

With Apple and iCloud accounts, for example, you can set up both a Recovery Contact (who will help you regain access) and a Recovery Key (a 28-character code you can use instead of your password). To get these options set up, select your account name and then Sign-In & Security in iOS Settings or macOS System Settings.

We’ve talked about keeping your files available in multiple locations, but you should also make sure your accounts aren’t active on any older or unused devices where they don’t need to be—it increases the risk of something happening to your data or someone else gaining access to your account.

Most cloud storage services will give you the option of seeing which devices are connected to your account, usually through one of the settings menus. When it comes to Google accounts, you can open up your account details on the web, then click Security and Manage devices to see where you’re logged in.