Modern PC users’ machines are personal and often emotional hubs of information, electronically storing vital correspondence, photos, CVs, music, academic documents and multimedia files, the loss of which can be devastating.
Users who have fallen victim to data loss know the amount of time, effort and money that is required to recover or replace it. That’s not taking into account the emotional distress that invariably accompanies the loss of personal data.
Interestingly, according to a 2009 survey by Symantec, lost photographs were found to cause most distress, as they represent irreplaceable memories. Ironically, these files are the most likely to be lost as a result of a hardware crash or computer virus.
Regularly backing up your data is a good way to ensure it stays safe, however, backing up to a disk or removable hardware and restoring it later can be a bit tricky and time consuming.
Users would be wise to consider online storage as an alternative option: It is a relatively easy and less time consuming way to keep your files and information safe.
For football fans travelling to World Cup 2010, where many will be using portable devices to record and store digital mementos of their experience, it’s actually a no-brainer.