Backing Up Files Without Starting a Philosophy Degree

Who controls the controller?

I set out to do something modest: back up some files.

Not migrate an ecosystem.
Not enter a long-term relationship with a cloud provider.
Just make sure that if one thing failed, another thing quietly existed.

I tried TeraCopy.
I tried Windows doing what Windows thinks is “helpful”.
I watched progress bars that conveyed motion but not certainty.

Eventually, I did something unfashionable.

I copied everything to a USB stick.
Then I let Android copy the files its way — and explicitly allowed copying without duplication.

The result?

Two folders.
1467 files on the tablet.
1467 files on the laptop.

No drama. No argument. No ghost duplicates.

What struck me wasn’t the success, but the relief.
Modern systems don’t like closure. They prefer to remain involved.
They sync, monitor, optimise, index, protect — and never quite stop talking.

This time, I chose a single authority at a time.
Android copied.
Windows observed.

That was the entire trick.

It felt less like using a tool and more like performing a small ritual:
one direction, one moment, one countable outcome.

Once-and-done.

Microsoft, I suspect, isn’t evil — just convinced it should always be in charge.
But sometimes backing up files isn’t a governance problem.
It’s a human one.

And humans occasionally want to finish something and move on.