“Emotional Hub” Data Backup

A new Symantec survey has revealed that people are more likely to check the oil in their car than they are to back up valuable data. When you consider that computers are much more than working machines, they have become very much woven into our everyday lives as both 'life storage' facilities and 'emotional hubs' that contain our digital souls, it is rather surprising that we are so lax about backing it all up.

Despite the admittance to feelings of anger and upset when data is lost, the survey participants are quite clear about it. 34% make regular data back ups, and only 22% back up all of their data. Of the 1000 people Symantec surveyed, 38% said that they had lost files and the average replacement cost cumulated for a UK user when it comes to all the data on their PC, was a hefty £1258.

The mostly costly data to replace was video, worked out to £158 for all recorded TV content on an average PC, with home videos adding another £108 and for downloaded movies, £101. Household information beat off the music data in the replacements costing, with £85 on average for documentation compared to £80 for the tunes.

A strong emotional connection has also been confirmed by the Symantec survey. The huge ranges of personally significant files stored on the PC's are emotionally sentimental, with the loss of photos, personal information, financial information and work or academic documents being the most impacting upon our emotions. Lost photos were top of the list with 82% saying that they would be upset at losing these memories which is a shame as this is the most likely type of data to be lost. The survey shows that of the 45% who had experienced data loss some 48% had lost digital images.

Con Mallon, director of product marketing at Norton told us “Our relationship with our computers has changed in recent years. We now use them as the storage vault for priceless, unique files with huge emotional value, replacing the treasured photo albums, or the stacks of love-letters tied with ribbon. This is why I am concerned at people’s complacency: only 22 per cent of people surveyed backup all of their files.”