Are your files safe? Today is World Backup Day

Some might not take this event seriously, but World Backup Day has a noble goal — to remind us that our digital assets are not as safe as many of us believe and backing them up is the only way to avoid a possible catastrophic data loss event. Since cloud storage and external drives are quite affordable nowadays, it would not be a bad idea to spend a few hours and take care of your digital self. After all, many of us are under quarantine already or will be so sooner or later, so backing up a log of files should help us burn some time in a useful manner. 

According to various sources quoted by Western Digital in a newsletter — not endorsed by World Backup Day, but entirely connected to it — they sent earlier today, 20 percent of computer users have never backed up their data, 1 in 10 US smartphone owners were the victim of phone theft and almost 70 percent of them were unable to recover the data on those phones, while nearly 20 percent of computer users have been targeted by a malware attack in the past year.

Just as it happened in the past, those who want to take the World Backup Day pledge — "I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st." — can do so on Twitter and/or Facebook.

Speaking for myself, I must confess that I currently use OneDrive, Google Drive, MEGA, and Yandex.Disk as a free user and I also got my hands on a good deal for 2 TB of cloud storage from ThunderDrive. Each one has its strong and weak parts and none is perfect yet, but at least I am sure that my essential files will survive if my computer blows up. Since this is a very interesting topic with many personal stories to tell, feel free to share your catastrophic data loss (and hopefully recovery as well) stories in the comments section.