Feature

Who’s Got Your Back?

Reminders about backing up are often about as welcome as mom’s reminders to eat your roughage or brush your teeth - you already know it’s good for you, and you also know it’s not that much fun.

Maybe that’s why, despite the risk of losing everything from a week’s work to a lifetime of precious photos, less than a third of the U.S. population backs up regularly, and more than a third don’t back up at all.

That’s right, more than 3 out of 10 people take absolutely no action to backup the contents of their computers. And a good portion of the rest do very little.

A new Symantec study puts the backup plans of U.S. consumers in perspective: we store increasingly precious data, we don’t back it up well, and both the resulting risks and solutions are remarkably simple.

Our Increasingly Precious Cargo

Every year, there’s a 50% increase in digital content stored electronically. Our online lifestyles and ever-expanding hard drives are putting a wider variety of important data at risk: precious photos and videos have gone digital, stored emails have replaced that drawer full of important correspondence, our music libraries are in iTunes, our financial plans in Excel. Many would say their entire lives are on their computers.

All of which makes it more alarming that not even a third of folks have a good backup plan. Clearly, even some of the 44% of US households who reported losing files (66% of them for good) and have experienced the trauma first hand aren’t getting the message. The most common risks are simple: hardware failure and viruses. Add to that theft, physical damage (weather, spills, drops) and the list of things that could leave you wishing you’d backed up is understandably long.

Working Without a Net

Symantec took pains to find out what pains people about backing up, and found that it’s not because people don’t care at all, but perhaps aren’t concerned enough to make the time (24% of households) or that they simply forget (23%). In other words, there’s no good reason not to backup, but perhaps there’s just not enough said about why to do it, and how easy it now is.

Many of those who do backup do it the old-fashioned way, using physical, portable hard drives instead of online solution. Besides being expensive, this may not prevent some causes of data loss, such as physical damage, hardware failure or theft.

Tetro, by Francis Ford Coppola, was unofficially “released” a few years ago when his personal computer and portable backup were both stolen from his home office in Argentina. Losing his computer didn’t seem as bad as losing the backup drive right next to it. "If I could get the backup back,” said Coppola, “it would save me years - all the photographs of my family, all my writing."

Easier Done Than Said

Backing up is easier than it was just a few years ago, requiring almost no user effort. The latest backup programs let users schedule regular backups, so they can “set it and forget it”. With online backup, documents enter a virtual “cloud”, where the user can gain exclusive access from any computer connected to the Internet. Keeping digital possessions off the physical grid keeps them safe from physical harm, like from thieves or the more common and non-glamorous ways that most of us lose data (including computer viruses, hardware crashes, and small mistakes like leaving your laptop in the trunk of the car on the hottest day of the year).

Norton’s Got Your Back

Norton’s solution, Norton Online Backup, uses this “cloud” approach, along with Symantec-inspired 256-bit encryption, which is stronger than bank encryption. It’s also faster because it compresses files before uploading them, and only uploads changes made since previous backups—so you don’t have to go through tedious hours of your PC backing up every single thing all the time.

If you want to try it before you buy it, you can dip your toes in the cloud with a Norton Online Backup free 30-Day trial.

The Time To BackUp Is Always Now

Whatever your backup plan, the most important thing is to start doing it. And tell others to do the same. Call your mom, IM your friends, spread the word to anyone you wouldn’t want to see on the verge of tears after losing their baby photos and half-written novel. Ask them, can you afford to lose what’s on your computer? And for those of you who use Twitter, instead of telling people generally what you’re doing right now, take a moment to answer the question “What are you backing up now?”

Because the time to backup is always right now.