Today is my favorite holiday that isn’t a real holiday but sort of is a real holiday and should be a real holiday (check the bottom of the post for why that’s half true). I want to do my part to help make World Back Up Day more legit. Before I get to the crazy long, fun infographic created by cloudwards.net, let’s reflect on years past and add my new thoughts for 2015.

2013 World Backup Day: The infographic from 2013 is worth enjoying. It’s a bit smaller than this year’s.

2014 World Backup Day: Carbonite and the cloud in general saved my ass in 2014. Read the story of how Carbonite and all my cloud data kept me calm in August 2013 when my computer shit the farm. Stupid graphics card making my laptop useless.

2015 World Backup Day: I recently upgraded my late 2011 Mac Book Pro to a 500 GB solid state drive. I bought this one, for about $200. It’s awesome. ArchiCAD opens insanely fast, the machine restarts unbelievably quick, and in general it’s like I am using a new computer. It’s wonderful. And with the 16 GB of RAM I added a few years ago, I feel confident I’ll be able to squeeze at least another year out of this machine. I am waiting until Apple unleashes a MBP with 32 GB of RAM. They have to. Someday. Right? Anyways, what does that have to do with World Back Up Day? Well two things: I took my old drive and saved a static backup of my machine. But more importantly, I copied over some other old files from my external hard drive and finally set up the 2 TB drive I have to be my external Time Machine drive. So now whenever my laptop is at my desk (almost always), it’s connected to that drive. Of course that’s just bonus insurance because I also have Carbonite running at all times as well. I am a huge fan of Carbonite. Try it yourself. Now between Time Machine and Carbonite, everything on my laptop is doubly safe, backed-up locally, on the cloud, and accessible even if my computer gets destroyed, lost, or eaten by a dinosaur. And that’s not to mention all the versions of important files I keep accessible in backup folders on my machine and other little ways I backup photos, the blog, e-mail, etc. It’s all about belt, suspenders, elastic waistbands, and wearing jumpsuits. Okay maybe that last analogy is jumping the rails…

In the modern world, our most important data-both personal and business-is digital. Don’t lose it. Because remember, if you lose data, it’s your own damn fault. Deal with it. With Backups!

The longest infographic about data safety you’ll see until 2016…

Courtesy of: Cloudwards.net. For more about World Back Up Day, click here and here.

Wow that was long. Whatever. Backups are important. No more Excuses.

Actually World Backup Day is my second favorite made-up holiday that is real. Tornado Day is obviously the most important day for me. But I’m basically the only person who truly celebrates it, though there are a few other people who by default do as well (because I make them). Follow Shoegnome on Facebook and Twitter for more on being an Architect in the 21st Century.