This is a guest post.
Dell recently released a report that was produced in partnership with the Ponemon Institute, where they surveyed over 800 people across 106 airports in order to find out more about how/why laptops get stolen or go missing during business travel, and what could be done about it.
According to the report, over 12,000 laptops go missing or stolen every week in US airports. That comes to about 1 laptop every 8 minutes. And even more interesting, was the discovery that 42% of respondents did not back up their data.
This has inspired us to put together a list of the 10 most common excuses that we’ve heard for people not backing up their data.
- Procrastination. That is one of the most common excuses. I’ll get to it tomorrow. I just need to finish this one assignment and then I’ll back it all up. I’ll get to it later. Stop putting it off, as the inevitable may occur.
- Not enough time. This common excuse is a valid one, since backing up an entire system can take several minutes to several hours. However, you can always leave the system on overnight for the backup to take place when it is not in use. Besides that, it will take way more time in the end if you have to resurrect lost data.
- Not enough storage space. Get an external hard drive, USB key, or burn some disks. Route the information to a storage facility. There is always space somewhere.
- I didn’t think a hard drive failure could happen to me. It will, and it can happen to anyone.
- My computer’s smart, it will remember the information. This may be so, but in the event of a major hard drive crash, all that data can be wiped out.
- I didn’t know how to. This is no excuse – ask someone.
- Someone can always find my data for me. Again, this may be true, but important data can be wiped out completely with a major crash.
- I wasn’t sure which files to backup. When in doubt, backup everything.
- It’s not my job. Is this really an excuse?
- I forgot.
Whatever the excuse it, you simply can’t afford to not backup your data. Your system may be working fine right now. But with the constant inevitability of a hard drive crash, it’s important to have a recovery plan. And if the threat of a crash isn’t enough, there is always a virus or potential hacker lurking around the corner.
Make the time now to save it for later. In the big picture, the amount of time needed up front to create a copy will be more valuable than the pain of trying in vain to recover the last 3 years of your life.
There are a lot of great excuses out there, but none of them are good enough to bring your files back once they’re gone.
About The Author
Storagepipe Solutions has been providing disaster prevention tools such as online backup and email archiving since 2001.