It's World Backup Day

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, today has been declared World Backup Day to bring attention to the fact that many of the computers we rely on in our daily lives are not backed up. Since I spend an inordinate amount of my time writing, lecturing and consulting with people about their backup architectures, I'm celebrating World Backup Day, and I hope you are too.

World Backup Day was conceived by some folks on Reddit, a social news site, just a week ago. I congratulate them on getting the word out as well as they did so quickly.

Coincidentally, I was reminded that I hadn't backed up my home network-attached storage (NAS) system, an Iomega IX2, in a while (OK, make that a few months) when I heard the distinctive sound of a dying fan coming from it the other day. So I hooked up a spare USB hard drive and started copying data off the IX2 as fast as USB 2.0 could handle. Some 20 hours later, the 800GBytes of data was on the USB drive and the IX2 turned off until I could get some time to replace the fan.  

So, folks, take World Backup Day--and my close call--to heart. Back up your computers, all of them. That includes the computers at your remote offices that 41 percent of you in our January poll for InformationWeek Analytics said you don't back up.

It also includes the laptops where your salesforce and execs create valuable data that you don't take care of. You can't get off the hook saying the user is responsible for the computer and should back it up. These are the same users you make fun of for computer ignorance all the time. If they're that clueless, how can you expect them to back up their data? If it holds data, back it up. If the data was created when people were on the payroll, the data is a corporate asset and you should back it up.If you back it up to removable media, encrypt your backups. Lost tapes and the like can result in huge liabilities. Ask the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which is now looking at a $300 million notification and identity theft protection bill.

In honor of world backup day, several vendors are offering discounts and contests:

I think World Backup Day is a great idea.  Of course, every day should be backup day, even though only Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti day.