March 31st — World Backup Day

The History of Backup Day's Emergence

On March 31, we celebrate World Backup Day. The initiative to celebrate this day was proposed by Reddit user Adam Jefferson in 2011. The date — the day before April 1st — was suggested by another user and was not chosen by chance: a backup can be a decent protection against April Fool's viruses, descendants of the self-propagating script "911", the Conficker worm, and other notorious threats from some time ago.

World Backup Day is designed to draw attention to the need to ensure data preservation. Physical computer failure, server malfunction, viral infection, accidental deletion of important files, and even an overly diligent cleaning lady can leave both huge corporations and individuals without valuable information. By the way, the last ones should take care of backing up their smartphones. Phones are still among the top items forgotten in taxis, but the amount of information stored on them is now many times more than a few years ago.

Real Data Loss Stories: Why Backup is Not a Whim, But a Necessity

The Tragedy at Pixar: How a Cartoon Almost Disappeared

One of the most famous stories is the fate of the film "Toy Story 2". A year before its release, 90% of the material was accidentally deleted with a simple rm -rf * command. Only thanks to a backup from one of the technical directors was the film saved. The production team had to manually check over 70,000 files to restore it.

Other Examples of Catastrophic Data Loss

• In 2011, a Gmail failure nearly led to mail loss for 0.02% of users. Thanks to backups, the data was restored within a few hours.
• GitLab.com lost over 300 GB of data after a backup process failure.
• The French company OVH lost several servers in a fire in 2021, which resulted in significant corporate data loss.
• An Adobe Lightroom app update on iPhone and iPad led to the deletion of thousands of processed photos accumulated over several years, along with paid presets worth hundreds of US dollars.

Risks of data loss: when one storage device is not enough

There are many scenarios where data can be lost forever:

1. Natural Disasters Natural catastrophes pose a serious threat to physical information carriers. These include fires, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. During such events, computers, servers, and external drives can be completely destroyed or significantly damaged, leading to irretrievable data loss.

2. Technical Failures Technical failures can occur at any moment and are unpredictable. Hard drive failure, server malfunctions, storage media damage, and electronic malfunctions can instantly destroy years of accumulated information. Statistics show that every hard drive has a certain percentage probability of failure.

3. Cyber Threats Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous. Virus attacks, ransomware, hacker breaches, and targeted cyberattacks can not only steal but completely destroy important information. Modern malware can instantly encrypt or delete data on all connected devices.

4. Human Factor The human factor remains one of the most common causes of data loss. Accidental file deletion, device theft, incorrect storage of media, and mechanical damage to equipment occur much more frequently than one might think. It takes just one careless movement or a moment of inattention to lose important information.

The "3-2-1" Rule: A Reasonable Approach to Backup

American photographer Peter Krogh in the book "The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers" developed a simple but effective data preservation strategy: the "3-2-1" rule.

Let's break down what these numbers mean:

• 3 copies of data
• 2 different types of media
• 1 copy outside the main location

Example Implementation:

• Original data stored on a working computer.
• One copy on an external hard drive.
• One copy on a server in a data center.

The advantages of such a division are obvious: it provides risk diversification, allows quick data recovery, and protects against various information loss scenarios. This approach ensures that even if one medium fails or an unforeseen situation occurs, the user will still have backup copies of important files.

Tips for Effective Backup

1. Regularly create backups.
2. Use different media.
3. Check the integrity of copies.
4. Store important data in multiple locations.