Why Back Up?

The most common question I'm asked when I tell people that I develop backup software is, "Why do I need to back anything up?" The short answer is "Because eventually you will lose everything that is on your computer." The full answer is, of course, more complex.

Computers use "hard drives" for their long term memory. Hard drives store the operating system (in our case, Microsoft Windows), the applications that we run on the computer (things like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, or Unreal Tournament), and the data that we create or download (pictures from our digital camera, word documents, mp3 files we've downloaded or ripped from our CDs).

Hard drives use round magnetic platters that spin (modern drives on consumer computers spin up to 10,000 times a minute!) under little arms with magnetic heads that either read or change the magnetic level of certain areas on the platters. To me, they look like little record players, except instead of having little physical grooves that vibrate a needle, they store magnetic impulses that are interpreted by the hard drive as the computer's language of zeroes and ones. Over the years, hard drives have become more sophisticated and reliable. They store vastly greater amounts of data, and often survive being physically dropped. But despite these advances in technology, hard drives are physical devices that will eventually wear out and break. Sometimes they give a warning before they die, giving the lucky user - who knows how to interpret the warnings - time to copy their data to a new hard drive. But more often they stop working without warning.

What will break a hard drive? Use over time will. Hard drives can only function for so long before they wear out. If it's in a computer case that's too hot, a hard drive can be cooked to death. External events such as power surges or physical shocks can also break a hard drive. Due to mass producing, many drives have manufacturing defects and only last a short while. The key thing to know is that a hard drive, over time, will inevitably die. It may be tomorrow, next week, or next year. I've had hard drives work for six or seven years and only retired them because their storage size became too small to be useful. I've also had drives die after only a few months of use. One really never knows.

Even without the ending of a drive's natural 'lifespan', a hard drive dying isn't the only way to lose data. Today, computer viruses are a constant threat, wiping out an entire computer in literally seconds. Computers and laptops can be lost, stolen, dropped, or burned, all of which can cause data loss. A faulty program causing the computer to 'crash' can also cause data corruption. However, the biggest cause of data loss is carbon based: that's you, me, or anyone else that operates a computer. Perhaps we tried to delete some files to free up space on the hard drive... the wrong files. Perhaps we opened an email attachment we shouldn't have, unleashing a virus that wipes out our system. Maybe we did some bad edits to a file, and need the old version back. Backing up regularly can reduce the frustration and pain when any of these mishaps occur.

We at Warm and Fuzzy Logic recommend that everyone back-up important files on their computer regularly. ShadowBack users are far more likely to have a completely up to date backup of all their important files when the inevitable happens.