Every small app owner believes their database is backed up until the day they need a backup and discover it is not. Backups fail silently: a cron job stops running, a disk fills up, a dump file is empty, and nobody notices because nobody ever tested a restore. This guide builds a free backup routine that is simple enough to maintain and, crucially, includes a restore test.

The routine uses three pieces: a daily dump, an off-site copy, and a monthly restore test. Each piece is free, and together they cover the failures that actually destroy small projects: accidental deletion, a failed deploy, and a dead server.