Question How Much Should You Back Up Your Data and What is the Likelihood of Drive Failure?

[avrona]

So I've been doing some research into how much people backup their data and what the odds are of their backups actually coming in handy, as I've never really understood the whole backup culture that exists in the tech world. I have no backups of any of my files and thankfully I've never needed one, so I decided to do some research and make a video on the subject. So I just want to know, if you are aware of the percentages and likelihoods of different types of drives failing, please do let me know, and also let me know if you backup your data, if you do, what kind of data is it, and how much do you recommend both normal PC users and more advance users backup their data?

 

[USAFRet]

Why is it the "correct procedure"? What dictates you should backup drives despite the extremely low odds?

Do you value your data?
Is some of it things you absolutely cannot get back or recreate?
Would you be sad/mad if it were to go away forever?

 

[avrona]

Do you value your data?
Is some of it things you absolutely cannot get back or recreate?
Would you be sad/mad if it were to go away forever?

Yes I do value it, most of it cannot be recreated it and I would be mad, but the chances are just extremely small of anything happening.

 

[TJ Hooker]

the chances are just extremely small of anything happening.

You're basing this on...?

 

[USAFRet]

Chances are "extremely small" that a major brand SSD will just die suddenly, taking 605GB of data with it.
But, it happened to me a few months ago.

Chances are "extremely small" of a myriad of other things happening. Yet I read about them every single day here. Multiple times.


Oh well. It's your stuff, not mine.
No one thinks they need a backup of their data.
Until about 5 minutes after they do.

Good luck.

 

[hang-the-9]

Why is it the "correct procedure"? What dictates you should backup drives despite the extremely low odds? And I do actually have some of my more important files "backed up" but it's through what I like to call "unintentional backups", when you are doing something resulting in a backup where it wasn't your primary goal, it's especially good as files you most often do "unintentional backups" of are you most important files, and it protect me from my only data loss I've experienced.

This is really just going in circles. All you need to know about backups was in the first few replies.