June is Backup Awareness Month

Palo Alto, California (PRWEB) June 1, 2009 -- A study conducted on behalf of Backblaze showed that individual backup habits have gone nearly unchanged year-over-year. Despite 46% of computer users every year losing photos, music, and other data from viruses, theft, hard drive crashes and a slew of similar causes[1], 94% of computer users continue to not do regular backups daily.[2]

To help users start backing up their computers, Backblaze is giving away a 1-year online backup subscription every day during this June's Backup Awareness Month. For more details, visit www.backblaze.com/backupawareness.

As a best practice, regular backups are defined as happening at least once per day. Unfortunately, there has been no change in the number of users doing backups at this frequency. There is a slight silver lining in the survey: while the percentage of users backing up daily went unchanged, there was a small improvement in users backing up at least weekly (13% vs. 14%) or monthly (27% vs. 26%).[2] This infrequent type of backup still results in significant pain when data loss occurs, but it points to some increased awareness of the importance of data backup.

Last year, sales of laptops - which are more susceptible to theft, loss, and breakage - overtook desktops; users buy more digital cameras, iPods, smartphones; and they take more digital photos, buy more digital music, and create more digital documents for work and home.[3] An average new computer today with a 320 GB hard drive can store over 30,000 photos, 20,000 songs, and 100 full-length movies. [4] Despite all of this, computer users continue to act as if their data is impervious to loss.

"For several years, Backup Awareness Month has been a time to examine whether your computer and those of your family and friends are being properly backed up," said Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze, "To help people start backing up, we are giving away free 1-year subscriptions to Backblaze online backup every day this month."To be entered to win one of the 30 free subscriptions for unlimited backup, visit www.backblaze.com/backupawareness.About Backblaze

Founded by a team of serial entrepreneurs with security, scalability, usability backgrounds, and located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Backblaze's mission is to ensure that all computer data is backed up. Backblaze was selected as a winner of the AlwaysOn Global Top 250 private companies for game-changing technology and market value. Visit www.backblaze.com for more information or to backup your own computer.

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Backblaze between May 13 and 14, 2009 among 2,185 respondents, and between May 27-29, 2008 among 2,761 respondents. In both surveys, respondents consisted of U.S. adult computer users (aged 18+). No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated; a full methodology is available.

[1] Data loss statistic based on percentage of Backblaze customers that needed to restore data.[2] This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Backblaze between May 13 and 14, 2009 among 2,185 respondents, and between May 27-29, 2008 among 2,761 respondents. In both surveys, respondents consisted of U.S. adult computer users (aged 18+). No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated; a full methodology is available.[3] Laptop sales reported on: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/Notebook-Sales-Outpace-Desktop-Sales/[4] Drive space calculated based on a 3 MB photo, 4 MB song, and 1 GB movie.