Why Backing Up Is So Important

What would you save in a fire? If you only had 30 seconds do grab your most precious belongings — what would it be? For most people, the answer will be memories: photos, letters or the cinema ticket from that first date. Things that no insurance in the world can recover.

As the world becomes more digital our memories are increasingly stored not in a shoebox in the attic, but in the cloud. That first, flirtatious conversation took place on iMessage. Those photos of the honeymoon are stored in the Photos app on your iPhone. Your childrens’ first drawings are made on an iPad.

Technology, unlike houses, rarely “burn to the ground”. Instead it “crashes”, “becomes corrupt”, “resets” or “hangs”. Regardless of what the tech support person calls it you know what it means: your files are lost forever.

Ultimately this is what backing up is all about. Preparing for the big crash. It’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when”. Think of it like this: if you knew in advance that there would be a fire in your house, wouldn’t you move your stuff to a secure location right away?

Backing up works the same way: it’s simply putting a copy of your digital files somewhere else, for save-keeping. It’s not a technical decision, it’s an emotional one.

Don’t delay backing up another month or another year. It might just be today that someone accidentally empties their coffee mug all over your laptop, taking those memories with them.

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