Acronis Celebrates World Backup Day With Survey Results (Hint: You Need To Backup!)

What would you do if you lost everything?

That’s what the website behind the backup movement asks, and it’s a good question. All too often, those who have to deal with a hard drive failure don’t have the data on that drive backed up to another, or to the cloud. It’s just gone, and sometimes, that’s mortifying. I’ve suffered it before, and I’ve vowed to never suffer it again.

Over the years, we’ve tried to harp on the importance of backing up on many occasions. We’ve even written a couple of articles that can help you figure out your next steps to make your data redundant, and we’ve taken a look at some backup solutions as well, such as Acronis’ popular True Image software.

Despite us and many others repeating the “Backup, backup, backup!” mantra over and over, there are still many out there not willing to learn from our mistakes. In celebration of World Backup Day, Acronis hosted a couple of surveys to get into people’s minds to see just how much importance they put on their data. The infographic can be seen below (click for the full image).

This probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but 75% of people now store their data digitally. That includes things like photos, which from talking to many who’ve suffered data failure is one of the worst things ever to lose (something this infographic backs up – no pun). 50% of people “back up” their data, but it’s saved to the same PC. In the event of a fire or multiple drive failure, that backup plan would quickly rear its ugly head.

Tying into that, less than 1/2 of people asked backup their data to an external device or to the cloud, and only 1/3rd are protecting their entire system. Nearly half of the people queried value their data at over $1,000, a number I actually find a bit low, as I’d truly hate to lose some data I have – irreplaceable data.

Given all that, 93% of survey respondents said that they’d be willing to pay $100 or less to back up their data, and that of course means just one thing: You can go with Acronis! Yes, Acronis’ infographic was definitely made out of self-interest, but as I personally make good use of its solutions (not its cloud solutions, as I use another provider), I don’t mind relaying its findings.

Do YOU backup? Are YOU prepared to lose sensitive and irreplaceable data if a hard drive fails?