I'll go even further than this. If you want to group the entire world together and get really general, I'll give you "no one backs up their data at all."

That's far more accurate. Honestly, of my neighbors who are very close friends (let's say 5 families), there is only 1 that I know backs up their data and has been doing it for over a year (at my insistence). I've gotten another one to back up some data to iCloud and I'm trying to get the others on board. In fact, the others have external WD pocket drives and the like with their original photos - and they use these drives for daily moving of files around as well or to play media on their media streamers. Accidents waiting to happen.

I wouldn't disagree with any of that. I guess I was mostly thinking of the people who have ever even thought briefly about backups, but that's still a small portion of the population. Even among those people, their backup behaviors are abysmal.

That's why services like Crashplan are so important: precisely because they don't have to do ANYthing to back up. They use the computer exactly like they did before, only now if something happens they're covered.

Take the human behavior out of the mix if you want to back up safely

I know where you're coming from. Of the people I know personally, I think I am the only "backupper." I have +/- 3TB of data, all of it backed up on premises, and 99.9% of it also backed up off-premises. Sometime next month I'll update the off-site backups to pick up that last 1/10%.

I've been working with computers since 1976, when hardware had nothing like the reliability of today's machines, and I had first-hand knowledge of the necessity of good backups. My work computer had a massive 10MB capacity (one fixed disk and one removable in a box the size and shape of a two-drawer filing cabinet) and backups took nearly an hour. But I did them, and kept the habit. Even so, I had a big scare when the hard drive went up in smoke (literally - an electrolytic capacitor the size of a soda pop bottle popped) and without that computer two radio stations and a television station would have been off the air. The service rep had to fly in from Anchorage (360 miles) and work overnight to get us going, but he did manage to save the data.

Ahhhh, the good old days.

tanstaafl.

I think most people figure that they don't have a backup (excluding insurance) for other tangible items in their lives, so they apply the same logic, to computer data. And while it's true that there are many catastrophes that can completely and instantly devastate tangible property and possessions, it doesn't take an otherwise (or typically) significant event to completely wipe computer data.

A 12" drop can kill a drive. And that's an easy to imagine scenario that needs only a momentary loose grip or a quick snag of a USB or power cable as someone or even a pet walks by.

Unfortunately I've had the opportunity (misfortune?) to tell friends "you should have had a backup" more often than helping them actually implement a backup strategy.

I think you're right that they're thinking that way, and while you're right about how much easier it is to lose digital data, I think the real reason a backup solution should be implemented is because of how freaking easy it is.

If a fire came along and claimed all your photo albums, you're screwed. It was always possible to have a "backup" of all your photos buy simply buying two prints of them all and keeping the second copy somewhere else, but that's difficult and expensive.

Now there's really no excuse. For $69, anyone can back up 10GB of data for four years. And in fact, Crashplan is completely free if you're just backing up to an external drive, which is better than nothing.


Ugh. I hate doing that. I've now implemented a policy where after the first visit to a new client, if they don't have a backup plan in place (which is 99% of them), I am certain to mention it. Frankly, I do this for my own piece of mind. I hate the thought of someone losing all their digital photos. But at least if I get that call down the road, they can't claim I never brought up the idea of backing up those precious memories...

Peripherally related... I see that today Google has upped my GMail storage to a full 10 gigabytes.

tanstaafl.