Backup routine
Your brain lives on LAN servers, stored durably, so you do not have to run any backup infrastructure yourself. What you do want is your own copy: a full download you control, kept somewhere you trust. That copy is both your backup and your exit door. It is one click, and this file walks through the simple routine, the verification step most people skip, and what to do if you ever want to move off LAN entirely.
The core routine: download your zip
From your LAN Brain dashboard, click Download (.zip). The download is built fresh from your live brain every time, so it is always current, never a stale mirror. It contains your complete brain (every wiki page and its structure) plus the raw source files you ingested. It is plain markdown and original files in a single archive, with no proprietary format and no lock-in.
Monthly is a sensible rhythm for most people. Put a recurring reminder on the first of the month.
After any big change, download then and there. A large ingest, a major reorganisation, a sprint of note-taking. Do not wait for the monthly slot to capture work you would hate to redo.
You do not need to remember anything technical. There are no commands, no repository, no push. The dashboard button is the whole routine.
Verifying your backup
Once a quarter, prove to yourself that the download actually works. Open the zip you saved, unzip it, and look inside. Confirm the wiki folder is there, the raw folder has your source files, and the latest notes you wrote are present. Open a page or two in any text editor or in Obsidian. If it reads the way your brain reads, the backup is real.
It takes a couple of minutes. The peace of mind is worth it.
If you ever want to leave LAN
The zip is your exit. Because the brain is plain markdown, a downloaded copy opens in any editor, on any machine, with no LAN software involved. If you cancel your subscription, you keep the last zip you downloaded, and it stays fully readable. Nothing about the brain depends on us once the file is on your disk.
If you want to keep working on the brain outside LAN, open the unzipped folder in Obsidian (choose Open folder as vault and point it at the folder). Everything you built is there.
Plain text survives any backup tool
Once you have downloaded a zip, it also lives happily inside any backup tool you already use. Drop the file into:
- Time Machine on Mac: it is captured with the rest of your documents.
- Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Drive: put the zip in the synced folder and it mirrors to the cloud automatically.
- Backblaze, Arq, Carbonite: include the folder where you keep your downloads in the backup set.
None of these replace the LAN-hosted brain. They are just extra copies of the zip you already control.
When in doubt
Download a fresh zip. It is always current, it is always complete, and it is always yours. There is no wrong time to grab another copy.