“World Backup Day”

A bunch of Reddit users have decided to declare March 31 as World Backup Day, using the clever tagline “Don’t be an April Fool.”

I know if I lost my work, it would be bad. How bad, like I don’t even want to think about it… of course I don’t want to think about it, because I have lost work before. However, I work to not repeat that mistake, and to help others not have to learn like I did.

There are numerous ways to back up data. I do periodic backups over time to external drives, which I keep in my fire and water resistant safe. These include things I would need right away if there was a disaster – things that would give me access to my client, tax, and insurance files.

I also continuously back up data to an external host – using Back Blaze. For $45/year, I can’t beat it, and it is stored far away – so if there was a local disaster, and only my family and I could escape, I could still get to my files.

Think that is too expensive think of it this way. If you lost your computer (think theft, fire, flood, or Godzilla attack) – how long would it take to:

• Recreate your list of clients? (with phone numbers, emails, and mailing addresses)
• Know who still owes you money, and who has paid?
• Recreate that project file which you’ve been working on for the last three months?

Now think of how much money your time is worth – if the hours * the hourly worth is more than $250, you ought to get a complete backup system. (If not – are you really in business, or is it just for fun?)

How did I come to the $250 number. Easy! It is not uncommon for a hard drive to fail within the first 5 years. $45 * 5 is approximately $250 ( I added a bit for inflation – and I like simple numbers) . So if you have a 50% chance of a failure, and can prevent data loss for <$50 a year – then it’s worth the little bit of cost.

Something to think about if you use a computer – especially if you use it for your business.