Data Backup Digest

Since there has been data, there has been data loss. It almost seems inevitable. No drive is capable of storing your data forever. At some point it will fail, though it might not be within the time period that you use the drive. Not only can a drive fail, but data can also be lost through human error; or through a virus; or through numerous other reasons. There’s never any point in taking a chance with your precious data – you need to always back it up.

Many people don’t backup their data, which is a foolish thing to do. Whether the data has business or personal use, it needs to be backed up if it is of any use to you. Having a single copy of your spreadsheets, your family photos, or your music is utterly bad practice. If you lose this data then, recovery techniques aside, you’re not going to see it again.

Of course, some people don’t consider the need to back up until they suffer data loss. Perhaps they take the mind-set that it won’t happen to them, or perhaps it genuinely doesn’t come into their mind. Nevertheless, don’t make excuses and delay. If you’re reading this and haven’t backed up your data then you need to so immediately. The clock is ticking.

Think about the business you work for. If one day all the data was gone, what would happen? Chances are operations would be impacted severely. Even if you don’t work in an office, it’ll likely still have deep consequences. A restaurant’s booking system, for example, or a hospital’s medical records. The majority of businesses, big or small, rely on data in some regard.

Large companies will have technicians dedicated to the upkeep and survival of their data, but that doesn’t mean smaller companies or individuals can’t also backup their data. Services exist that will help you with your backups, like local data centres or online cloud services.

It bears the question: will there ever be a world without data loss? Speaking logically, the answer is no. There will always be those who don’t backup their data. But that group could drastically decrease over time providing good practices are communicated. The amount of data produced around the world only continues to grow – as that reliance increases, perhaps the increasingly importance of data and the need to back it up will be realised.

In the future we may see wide-spread use of home-use drives that have redundancy built into them. This may be partnerships with online storage services, providing automatic cloud backup. Maybe there will drives with dual storage inside, one providing a clone copy of data. Whatever the case, as technology improves and storage becomes cheaper, hopefully backup will be something that is instantly considered when buying a data storage device.

The importance of backup cannot be overstated. If data loss is to become a thing of the past then education is key. Information stored in data is an incredibly important asset that won’t be leaving us. Technology may change, but data is constant.