Dave Friend, the CEO of Carbonite, wrote a blog post the other day about his experience actually using his product.
According to a recently released survey by Compuware, most data loss is attributable to either user negligence or malice. Only 1% of data loss is due to hackers. I loved the headline on this story: “3/4 idiots, 1/4 bitterness.”
I have to confess to being part of the “idiot” crowd. Three weeks ago I left my laptop sitting on my seat when I got off the train in New York. I remembered it just in time to see my train, with laptop still aboard, disappearing down the track. Except for occasionally recovering individual files that I accidentally delete or overwrite, I haven’t actually had a PC disaster since starting Carbonite 3 years ago. So, aside from the pain of having to buy a new laptop, it was fun to use my own product to get everything back. I was really proud of how well it worked.
Something similar happened to me a few weeks ago. I was at the Vancouver airport and took the shuttle bus to the parking lot. I went up to the front of the bus to tell the driver where I was parked and chatted with him a bit. When we stopped, I jumped off and waved goodbye.
It was then that I realized that I had left my backpack with my MacBook Pro (aka my third child) and my car keys (!) on the bus. I turned around and started running back, but luckily he was still sitting there and I was able to get my bag back.
When we think about backing up our files, we always think about hard drives failing or fire or theft, but you also have to remember the idiot factor. I sure do now.
