In this day in age, people create a huge amount of data on a daily basis – photos, high definition and 4K video, applications, and more. But to many people, the idea of backing data up is boring, mundane and unnecessary, with people taking a “it’ll never happen to me” point of view regarding data loss.

So why don’t people back up? One of the common things we hear is that it takes too long. But with USB 3.0 technology and super-fast hard drives, backing up really doesn’t take that long at all. You can also just backup incremental data to speed things up. Another reason is that people naively think that because they have a brand new computer, the hard drive won’t fail. While it’s true that hard drives are more likely to fail the older they are, this isn’t an excuse not to back up.

Needless to say, with some of the horror stories we’ve heard, we thoroughly recommend you backup regularly. The issue is, though, many people do backup, just not correctly or often enough. Backing up data to an external hard drive, the most common way that businesses and home users store their data, isn’t automated. Because of this, backing up can often be overlooked, and when an incident occurs, many people find their last backup was weeks or months.

The key things to bear in mind are:

1) Setting up a regular backup schedule if you don’t have an automated one
2) Check backup reports for any signs of failure or corruption
3) Test your backups on a regular basis to ensure everything is working properly