{"id":34151,"date":"2015-06-23T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=34151"},"modified":"2025-07-20T05:41:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T12:41:29","slug":"computer-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/computer-backup\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Backup: Pick a Card, Any Card"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-34161\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/card-blog-banner.jpg\" alt=\"Computer Backup\" width=\"720\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/card-blog-banner.jpg 720w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/card-blog-banner-300x146.jpg 300w, https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/card-blog-banner-560x272.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">Earlier this month, we blogged about the results from our <a href=\"\/blog\/backup-awareness-month-2015\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2015 Annual Backup Awareness Survey<\/a>. There were charts and tables and numbers, and as everyone read it, their eyes glazed over and they drifted into a sound sleep. For the last eight years, we&#8217;ve collected, parsed, and presented this data each June. The upshot is that only 8% of <a href=\"\/blog\/more-people-than-ever-backing-up-according-to-our-survey\/\">people back<\/a> up their computers daily while for the remaining 92%, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-backup\/personal\">computer backup<\/a> is a game of chance. If publishing charts and graphs and such doesn\u2019t seem to reach the 92% that are backup procrastinators, what else can we do?<\/p>\n<h2>Let\u2019s Play a Game<\/h2>\n<p><strong>What you need to play:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>Go get a standard deck of 52 playing cards. Go ahead, we\u2019ll wait.<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Game set up:<\/strong> Your computer has been stolen! Based on the statistics we\u2019ve gathered over the past eight years, let\u2019s see how much of your data is lost. By <a href=\"\/blog\/youve-lost-data-without-a-backupnow-what\/\">lost data<\/a>, we mean the photos, documents, spreadsheets, etc. you changed or added on your computer since your last backup.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Playing the game:<\/strong> With the playing cards face down, each player in turn takes the deck of cards, shuffles it multiple times and then randomly picks one card from the deck (no peeking). Match the chosen card to the table below to see how much data you\u2019ve lost.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<table style=\"width: 50%; border-collapse: collapse;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th colspan=\"2\" align=\"center\"><span style=\"line-height: 40px;\">How much data will you lose?<\/span><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left; font-weight: bold;\">Card Drawn<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left; font-weight: bold;\">Amount of Data Lost<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">2, 3, or 4<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">All of your data is lost<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">5, 6, 7, 8, or 9<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">One year or less<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">10, Jack or Queen<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">One month or less<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">King<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">One week or less<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">Ace<\/td>\n<td style=\"text-align: left;\">One day or less<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<p>Record how much data you\u2019ve lost, return your card to the deck, and give the deck to the next player. The game continues until there are no more players to draw from the deck. Each player gets only one turn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Winning the game:<\/strong> The person who loses the least amount of data wins. Multiple players can win by losing the same amount of data. If all players lose all their data, there is no winner.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Playing time:<\/strong> A couple of minutes (most of that time will probably be spent looking for a deck of cards).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Time to recover your lost data:<\/strong> Proportional to the time since you backed up.<\/p>\n<h3>Drawing Aces<\/h3>\n<p>In the real world, having a computer<a href=\"\/blog\/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy\/\"> backup strategy<\/a> is \u201caces.\u201d We\u2019ve put together a Computer Backup Guide outlining many of the different <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-backup\/personal\">backup options<\/a> available. Some of the options are manual, some are automatic, but all can help you back up and recover the data that resides on your computer. After all, backing up your computer shouldn&#8217;t be a game of chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier this month, we blogged about the results from our 2015 Annual Backup Awareness Survey. There were charts and tables and numbers, and as everyone read it, their eyes glazed over and they drifted into a sound sleep. For the last eight years, we&#8217;ve collected, parsed, and presented this data each June. The upshot is&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/computer-backup\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Computer Backup: Pick a Card, Any Card<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121,4],"tags":[469],"class_list":["post-34151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backing-up","category-backup-awareness-month","tag-consumerbackup","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Computer Backup: Pick a Card, Any Card<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Earlier this month, we blogged about the results from our 2015 Annual Backup Awareness Survey. There were charts and tables and numbers, and as everyone\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are You Playing a Game of Chance With Your Most Important Files?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier this month, we blogged about the results from our 2015 Annual Backup Awareness Survey. 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