Most hotspot operators take their first backup immediately after a reset that cost them a day. Take it now instead.
MikroTik gives you two mechanisms that people routinely confuse, and they fail in different ways.
Binary backup vs configuration export
/system backup save writes a binary file containing everything, including passwords and interface identities. Restoring it returns the router to precisely the state it was in.
The catch: it is tied to that router. You generally cannot restore a binary backup onto different hardware, and it is not human-readable, so you cannot inspect it or restore only one piece.
/export file=config writes a readable text file of commands that recreate your configuration. It is portable across hardware, diff-able, and you can copy a single section out of it.
The catch: it does not include passwords by default, and it will not restore a device to a byte-identical state.
Take both. The binary for a same-hardware disaster, the export for migrating, auditing, or rebuilding on a replacement device after a lightning strike.
Schedule it
A backup you have to remember is a backup you will not have. Use the scheduler.
A weekly binary backup and a weekly export is enough for most single-site hotspots. If you change configuration often, go daily — the files are small.
Name the files with a date. A folder of files all called backup.backup is not much use when you need the one from before last Tuesday.
Get them off the router
This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters.
A backup stored only on the router is worthless in exactly the scenarios you are protecting against: the router is stolen, the storage fails, or someone resets it. If your only copy was on the device, you have nothing.
Copy them somewhere else — a laptop, a NAS, cloud storage, or email them to yourself. Anything that is not the router.
Test the restore
An untested backup is a hope.
If you have a spare router, restore to it and see what actually comes back. If you do not, at least open the export file and read it. Does it contain your hotspot configuration? Your user profiles? Your firewall rules? If the file is 2 KB when you expected 40, find out why now rather than during an outage.
The common surprise: an export without show-sensitive omits passwords, including RADIUS secrets and PPP credentials. Restoring it leaves you with a configuration that looks complete and does not authenticate. Know which of your secrets are not in the file, and record them separately.
What backups do not cover
Your router configuration is not your business records. Vouchers you have generated, which are used, and what you have earned live in User Manager’s database, which behaves differently from the rest of the configuration and is not always fully captured by a routine backup.
If your revenue history matters — and it should — make sure whatever tracks it keeps its own records, not just the router.
Automating it
MikrotikAdmin’s System Admin area has scheduled backups as a guided task: it creates the scheduler entries, names files by date, and keeps a sensible number of them rather than filling the router’s storage.
It cannot do the important part for you. Getting the files off the router, and testing that a restore works, still needs a decision from you about where they go and how often you check.