{"id":57661,"date":"2016-06-02T09:49:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T16:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=57661"},"modified":"2025-12-12T14:09:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:09:59","slug":"data-backup-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/data-backup-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Backup: Are You a Hero or a Zero?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Data<\/a><\/p>\n

June is Backup Awareness month, and Backblaze being a data backup company<\/a>, is keen to have folks be, well, backup aware. During the year, we publish blog posts and articles on data backup<\/a> and spend marketing money spreading the word\u2014back up your data. We\u2019re not alone, as there are plenty of other companies doing the same thing. So how are we all doing? Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n

The 2016 Backup Awareness Survey<\/h2>\n

This is the ninth year we\u2019ve asked the folks at Harris Interactive to poll computer owners<\/a> and ask the question \u201cHow often do you back up all the data on your computer?\u201d We receive pages and pages of data from the survey and we\u2019d like to share some of the interesting facts and figures. Let\u2019s start with comparing the 2016 results with the previous years. Here are the results in both graphical and tabular form.<\/p>\n

\"Computer<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Backup<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the years, you can clearly see the percentage of people who have \u201cnever backed up\u201d is on a downward trend. In 2016, for the first time, \u201cNever\u201d was not the highest percentage, replaced by \u201cYearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

World Backup Day<\/h3>\n

While June is Backup Awareness month here at Backblaze, each year on March 31st there is World Backup Day<\/a>, a day to remind people to back up their computers. Maybe people are taking World Backup Day<\/a> a little too seriously, as 25% of people in our 2016 survey back up their computers just once a year. While we can appreciate World Backup Day for reminding people to backup their data, we’d like to let everyone know it is OK to back up your computer a little more often.<\/p>\n

People Lose Data<\/a>, a Lot<\/h3>\n

As part of the 2016 Backup Awareness survey, we asked “When was the last time you or someone you know lost computer<\/a> data (e.g., photos, music, documents) and could not recover it?” It turns out that 53% of the 2,012 respondents answered in the positive by providing a time-frame of the data loss (i.e., in the last week, in the last month, etc.). Only 24% said they had never experienced data loss or knew someone who did. The remaining 23% of respondents were not sure if and\/or when they lost data<\/a>. With only 8% of people backing up daily it is easy to see how over 50% of people could lose data when their computer crashes or is lost or stolen.<\/p>\n

Some Additional Insights\u2026<\/h3>\n

As noted, we get pages and pages of data with each survey, but rather than bore you with the details we\u2019ve extracted a few interesting nuggets.<\/p>\n