As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create a backup and restore procedure for your business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the administration pages for each business system, backup product and cloud storage service, and record the systems covered, backup frequency, retention, locations, encryption, access controls, alerts and exclusions without copying passwords or recovery keys.
   2. Gather your current restore instructions, supplier support details, recovery-key storage arrangements, recent backup logs and any existing recovery targets into one working document.
   3. Paste the gathered facts into the prompt, replacing each bracketed slot with confirmed information and leaving a slot as NEEDS CONFIRMING when you do not know the answer.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the procedure and its open-question table, then remove any instruction that refers to a feature or setting your supplier does not provide.
   5. Compare every backup and restore step against the live administration pages and supplier documentation, and ask a technically competent colleague to check the permissions, dependencies, recovery targets and escalation route.
   6. Run a controlled restore of a non-critical file or test system using the drafted procedure, record the time, result, data integrity checks and any deviations, then update the procedure with the tested steps.
   7. Save the approved procedure, test evidence and change record in the agreed internal location, and assign the owner to review it whenever a system, supplier, permission or backup setting changes.

   Prompt

   Create a backup and restore procedure for a UK business using only the information below. Do not invent systems, settings, legal requirements, recovery targets or supplier features. Where information is missing, write [NEEDS CONFIRMING] and list the exact question I must answer. Separate confirmed facts from assumptions.
   
   Business and process:
   - Business name or description: [BUSINESS]
   - Critical services and data: [SYSTEMS AND DATA]
   - Maximum acceptable data loss: [RPO OR NEEDS CONFIRMING]
   - Maximum acceptable downtime: [RTO OR NEEDS CONFIRMING]
   
   Current backup arrangements:
   - Backup products and suppliers: [BACKUP TOOLS AND SUPPLIERS]
   - What is backed up: [SCOPE]
   - Backup frequency and retention: [FREQUENCY AND RETENTION]
   - Backup location or locations: [LOCATIONS]
   - Encryption and access controls: [DETAILS]
   - Monitoring, alerts and backup logs: [DETAILS]
   - Known exclusions or limitations: [DETAILS]
   
   People and permissions:
   - Procedure owner: [ROLE]
   - People allowed to run backups and restores: [ROLES]
   - Supplier or technical support contact: [CONTACT OR NEEDS CONFIRMING]
   - Where credentials and recovery keys are held: [LOCATION, WITHOUT PASTING SECRETS]
   
   Write a practical procedure with these sections: purpose and scope; definitions; roles; backup steps; backup monitoring and escalation; restore decision rules; restore steps for an individual file and a whole system; restore verification; failed-restore handling; security and access controls; testing schedule; records to retain; change control; and a short checklist for each run. Include placeholders where facts are missing. Make every instruction specific to the supplied systems, and label any instruction that requires confirmation from the supplier or a technical professional. End with a table of open questions and a list of evidence needed to approve the procedure. Do not claim that a backup is valid until a restore test has succeeded.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.