Why Bother With Backups?

This whole web site is devoted to the topic of backing up your Windows computer, so the following statement may sound a little heretical: maybe you don't need to bother backing up your data!

Most experienced computer users would say that every single Windows user should be backing up their computer thoroughly and regularly. But it's worth considering whether or not, for some users, the effort of performing backups outweighs the risk of not doing so.

Some people are basically using a Windows computer for exactly two things: email and browsing the web. If that's all you use the computer for, do you really have to bother doing any backups?

Web Browsing Data   
At first glance, it might seem like there's nothing to lose if the computer you use just for web browsing dies. However, you might be surprised to find a couple of kinds of data worth backing up that are related to web browsing.

First, you might have "bookmarked" some of your favorite web sites. All popular web browsers give you an easy way to keep add the page you're currently viewing to a list of your "favorites" or "bookmarks". The browser stores that list on your computer's hard disk, so if the disk or your entire computer dies and you have no backup, that information will be lost.

Second, unless you have taken pains to avoid it, your computer is constantly storing "cookies", or small pieces of information that web sites want to store on your computer to identify you when you return to the web site. Most of these cookies are of little value, but sometimes they are used to automatically log you back in to the computer. Did you ever click on a web page button labeled "Remember my password."?

Just Browsing Produces Important Data

For example, I paid The Wall Street Journal for a subscription that lets me read their newspaper online. They gave me a user ID and password that I had to enter the first time I went to their site, but then they stored that information on my computer in the form of a cookie. After that, I could use that same computer to read their newspaper online anytime without having to re-enter my user ID and password. But if that cookie got destroyed somehow, then I would have to remember that silly user ID and password (which I actually don't have written down anywhere) in order to read the newspaper again.

Email Data   
With email, it's more obvious what you might lose if you don't backup your data. Your email program almost certainly saves a copy of all the mail you receive and send. You may have even gone to the trouble to sort that email into a set of folders by topic. Without backups, all that correspondence could be lost if you have some kind of computer failure.

Just Using Email Produces Important Data

People might also send you things of value in email messages besides text, such as pictures. Email attachments can contain almost any kind of data, so your email box might contain movies, pictures, audio, spreadsheets -- almost any kind of data.

But besides all your letters, your email program stores something else important -- the email addresses of all the people you communicate with. Over time, your email program's address book can accumulate a surprising number of addresses, some of which you might have difficulty finding again if that address book were lost.

Who Can Avoid Backups?

Some people browse the web and rarely, if ever, bookmark their favorite pages. Some people simply wouldn't miss their list of favorite web sites, because they weren't that important, or could be easily rediscovered by using a search engine. There are also people who never use any web sites that require logins, or store that information in a cookie. Clearly, it's possible that losing all web browsing data may not be much incentive to backup data for some Windows users.

Losing all your email correspondence tends to bother more people. But, in all fairness, there are people who don't use email much, or who make a paper copy of any important correspondence they send or receive via email. Clearly, it's possible that losing all email data may not be much incentive to backup data for some Windows users.

My Computer is Brand-New!

You just unpacked your shiny, new computer, got it all set up with all kinds of nifty new computer programs. It's almost guaranteed that the very last thing on your mind at that point is going to be backups. After all, when you drive that new car home from the dealership, you don't really worry about having to replace the tires or battery -- they're brand new after all!

But having a brand-new computer is not a good reason to postpone thinking about backups. It's natural to think that a brand-new computer is less likely to break than a year-old computer, but that's not entirely true. The reason is the peculiar failure rate curve of hard disks.

The Bathtub-Shaped Curve

You might think that the failure rate for hard disks is a curve that starts low (i.e., new hard disks rarely fail) and slowly grows with age (i.e., hard disks break more often the older they get). However, the truth is that if you chart the failure rate of hard disks versus their age, the curve looks like a bathtub! Very new hard disks actually have a non-trivial failure rate, but hard disks of moderate age have a lower failure rate, and then the failure rate starts to rise again when the hard disks are old.

This bathtub-shaped curve can be explained by the different kinds of things that make hard disks fail. When a disk is first manufactured, it may have been simply built incorrectly. Thus, it may fail immediately as soon as the power is turned on, or shortly thereafter.

After a batch of hard disks has been run for a while, you essentially will have weeded out most of the disks that died due to gross manufacturing errors. Thus, the failure rate appears to drop. Eventually, however, even well-made hard disks have parts that start to simply wear out due to old age. Thus, the failure rate starts to increase again because of the finite lifetime of moving parts.

The moral is: if you think you shouldn't have to worry about backups because your computer is very new, you're fooling yourself. A brand-new computer can actually be more likely to lose your data than one that has seen a few months of operation!

Can You Avoid Backups?

The main point here is to understand exactly what you're risking by not backing up your data. Then, you can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in backups.

If you're one of the many people who use their Windows computer only for email and browsing the web, it's possible you can avoid backups and not get hurt too badly if your computer or hard disk dies.

But beware! Computer use tends to expand slowly but insidiously. So, people who only use their Windows machine for browsing and email may wake up one day to realize they've also been using a word processor to create some documents, like a will, or a company report. You don't want to have your computer die only to realize with horror that it contained the only copy of last year's tax return.

Most people who avoid backups eventually live to regret it!

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