Gebackupt

Gebackupt is a colloquial term used in German-speaking information technology and online communities to indicate that a backup of data has been created. It is formed from the English verb back up, rendered in German as backuppen, with the standard German perfect participle prefix ge- and the ending -t: gebackupt.

In practice, gebackupt is not part of standard German orthography. It appears predominantly in informal contexts such as forums, chat messages, or informal documentation among IT professionals, developers, and gamers. It conveys that a backup copy exists, often immediately after the backup process has finished, e.g., “Ich habe die Dateien gebackupt.” The term is typically used as a temporal marker rather than a formal technical term.

Because it is informal, gebackupt should be avoided in official documentation or formal communication, where alternatives like gesichert, erstellt eine Sicherung, or eine vollständige/ inkrementelle Sicherung are preferred. The concept behind the term remains the same as backup in English: creating and storing copies of data to protect against loss, corruption, or hardware failure.

Related concepts include backup strategies (full, incremental, differential), versions or snapshots, offsite or cloud backups, encryption, integrity verification, and restore testing. While gebackupt signals that a backup exists, good practice emphasizes documenting the backup’s location, scope, encryption, retention period, and the ability to restore data reliably.