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Data Disasters - Fool Me Once (and hopefully never again)

Data Disasters - Fool Me Once (and hopefully never again)
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World Backup Day is March 31st

We love using this time to reflect on our habits around data - both personal and professional.

There is a very common belief out there that can be summed up as “My data is safe - I don’t think I need to worry much about backing it up.” This belief is held by the tech-illiterate as well as self-described tech “pros” across the world. And even if they don’t have this belief, per se, there is a trend of people putting data backup at the end of their to-do list. Getting an antivirus solution, a VPN, or shiny new hardware tends to feel more important to most people in regards to their technical “must acquire” list. If there’s one idea I want you to start believing today, it is the following:
 

Incorporating an automated Data Backup plan is one of the most important actions you can take to save yourself time, energy, and frustration.

 

World Backup Day serves as a useful reminder for all of the things that can go wrong with your data:

  • A hard drive can reach the end of it’s lifespan well before the “estimated” date that marketing claims
  • Becoming a victim of a malware/ransomware infection that results in the need to wipe hard drives
  • A dropped laptop can completely ruin a hard drive, especially if its a mechanical drive and not an SSD

I have experienced multiple data disasters in my teens and early 20’s because I gave far too much confidence in the 7200RPM spinning hard drive in my computer. Time and time again, I experienced heartache when I realized that my video projects, pictures, school essays, and updated resumé were lost to malware, a stolen laptop, or the eventuality of a hard drive giving up on life. It wasn’t so much that I misunderstood the importance of having an external hard drive and a backup schedule. For most of my life, I’ve actually owned an external hard drive! My issue was actually remembering to reconnect that hard drive to my PC and run a backup more than once a year (I blame ADHD).  More often than not, my inability to stick to a backup schedule led to the loss of a lot of data that was very emotionally or scholastically important to me.
 

My fellow Community Manager, Tyler Moffitt has some interesting stories to share as well:

Geek Squad Employee Story

I worked at Geek Squad for about 5 years so I’ve had plenty of heartbreak stories when it comes to broken computers and lost data. The most common ones were from young women that had all their wedding pictures lost or older generations who had many grandchildren photos all lost. These are usually conversations with tears and anger, but it’s mostly the confrontation that nothing can be done once the hard drive has died. Very few times do people pay for the exorbitant amount of money that it costs for a deep dive hard drive recovery. Almost all the people have to make do with the loss as well as a very important lesson learned. Usually it was followed by a new computer purchase and then an additional drive for the purpose of backing up data.

The problem was that people assume that these computers are going to work forever, or that there wont be an accident. There is very little one can do to convince someone that they need a redundancy plan and they need to stick to it when they are purchasing a new computer, or everything with their current computer is working well. This used to be having a flash drive or external hard drive that you would regularly backup your stuff to. You could do it manually or have some software do it for you automatically. Things have definitely gotten easier now that we have cloud storage, but that’s only grown in popularity over the past decade.

 

The Good News

Data Backup has gotten so much easier and more streamlined in the past few years. Cloud backup solutions have made the concept of “forgetting to backup” a thing of the past. Using a cloud backup solution also comes with other conveniences such as connecting multiple devices to one cloud account. If you choose to stick with a local backup method, hard drives are cheaper than ever (see below graph) and creating a local backup schedule is very easy on MacOS and Windows.

The reality is that backing up your data is not inherently difficult. Cloud backups and scheduled  local backups are both easy and cheap options for making your files resilient to a data disaster. The hurdle that many of us (including my past self) actually need to overcome is prioritizing the initial setup process of a backup solution. The mistake when I was younger was constantly procrastinating the process of backing up to my external hard drive. That mistake resulted in so many of my files being lost forever. I learned the incredibly humbling lesson of why backups are so vital and I implore you all to not make that same mistake. Taking a couple hours to buy/setup a backup solution is 100% worth the time investment!

 

Tell me your stories

Now I’d love to hear about your journeys with data backup. Have you ever experienced a severe data disaster? What was the catalyst that led to you adopting a backup solution? Do you use cloud or local backups? I can’t wait to hear from you in the comments below!


63 replies

Userlevel 7
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Loving all these stories everyone! This is quality stuff.

Userlevel 3

Backups are very important. Cloud and local backups 

Userlevel 7
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And just in… this morning… a client on the phone to say that they are looking for data in their SharePoint folder, and have found that one of the items they need urgently (isn’t it always the case) but the other item has been overwritten by someone else and the data is wrong and this is the most important file they need… is there anything I can do? 

It’s always the same scenario… urgent… and critical file is the one missing etc… hence the reason to always be prepared!

 

As I have a backup solution in place for their SharePoint and Microsoft 365 data, it has been easy enough for me to go back and find revisions to the needed document and present them all to the client for them to go through and choose what they need. Up until this moment of recovery, they would be willing to pay anything for this data back, and you need to re-enforce to your clients that whatever they are currently paying you for the backup solution in place, it has already paid for itself now, and in the future.

That is the problem with backups like this… they work, client just feels that they are paying money out, but not seeing anything in return… and event such as this, just this morning has not only proven that the solution I suggested to them has worked, but the value for money they have now got from it has been seen and costs justified.


It’s nice when a plan comes together!

Userlevel 7
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A company I used to work for had an employee leave under unfortunate circumstances and it is believed (although still not proven to this day) that he went on a bit of a path of destruction by infecting a number of our clients servers with Crypto (the early versions). At the time it was relatively new and really put a magnifying glass over the clients backup solutions, a number of them were still using tape backups which were a swine to restore from. It led to the review of all client solutions and a renewed nudge to them about upgrading what they used. 

Userlevel 4

i don’t have personal data to backup but i tend to be a little harsh with my customer who don’t give enough attention to their backup system

Userlevel 3

Touching Wood...I havent had any data disatsers...am I the lucky one?

Userlevel 7
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Touching Wood...I havent had any data disatsers...am I the lucky one?

You must be pretty lucky! We haven’t had a lot, but good backups have definitely saved our clients a few times.

Userlevel 7
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A few years ago we had a customer’s office burn down. Since we had backups, we were able to spin up the servers in the cloud and get everyone up and running in a few hours.

This is why I always insist on a “not-local” solution for backup, like the cloud or server somewhere else. A local disaster like this can take out the computers and the backup. Glad to hear your solution got them back up and running in a few hours. That is an amazingly quick recovery time. 

Userlevel 5

What a good reminder to back up things regularly. It’s heart breaking hearing people lost their wedding photos! 

Userlevel 7
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Had a lot of usage with Datto which I highly recommend but it's bloody expensive and their support has gone down hill as they've gotten bigger (in my experience at least)

Userlevel 7
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Had a lot of usage with Datto which I highly recommend but it's bloody expensive and their support has gone down hill as they've gotten bigger (in my experience at least)

Totally agree with this assessment. Really love Datto, but their support has definitely declined as they’ve gotten bigger. Even so, they are still among the best vendor support we have.

Userlevel 7
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Had a lot of usage with Datto which I highly recommend but it's bloody expensive and their support has gone down hill as they've gotten bigger (in my experience at least)

Just saw this: “Datto to be Acquired by Kaseya for $6.2 Billion” Wonder how that might effect their offerings? 

Userlevel 7
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Had a lot of usage with Datto which I highly recommend but it's bloody expensive and their support has gone down hill as they've gotten bigger (in my experience at least)

Just saw this: “Datto to be Acquired by Kaseya for $6.2 Billion” Wonder how that might effect their offerings? 

I love Datto, and am really upset that Kaseya bought them out. Every Kaseya product we’ve used has turned to crap. Hoping we don’t need to get a new backup solution.

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