last updated: 2026-08-14
let's say right now - whoopsie! your phone falls on the floor, cracks open, a car runs it over, and then it explodes. oh no that sucks. i’m sure you must’ve had at least ONE important thing on there. photos perchance, videos, notes, audio recordings. question is… is any of that data backed up?
recently that whoopsie moment occurred to me. my phone had fallen in water for a fraction of a second, but even then! that was far too long of a time for it to be in water. and my phone was completely fried. ironically enough i was writing this on a google doc, which at the moment is having difficulties opening... this got me thinking about data… and backing up my data… and data corruption.
it turns out that: it’s pretty easy to lose your data. “bitrot” is the term for when data rots away - like when a VHS melts or a disk gets scratched. when a phone falls in water… data can also be lost when your files are on the cloud and your account is locked. data is lost when you need proprietary software or specific hardware to access it.
in 1975 NASAs viking project consisted of two spacecraft that landed on mars. these machines gathered data that, due to the rationation, corrupted information overtime. losing scientists valuable information and limited their ability to study mars even further.
in 1986 the BBC domesday project crowdsourced over 9000 schools and over a million people. the goal was to document local geography, life and culture. all this information was stored in two laserdiscs. the laserdiscs were encoded with proprietary software which ended up being outdated in 1990 and were inaccessible by the 2000’s.
the royal society open science journal found that 70% of their digital articles were in some way corrupted. the storage method relied on magnetic media which is any method of storing data with magnetized particles. VHS, floppy disk, magnetic tapes, hard drives.
this is to say that: you are not immune from the same tragedies that befall even the most technically savvy forefronts of technology. even if you don’t do anything wrong, the world around you is out to get you. files corrupt, hardware breaks, natural disasters occur.
and the truth is? most people don’t back up their data, or any valuable information they truly care about. a majority of people are happy enough sending it to the cloud and calling it a day, thinking that place alone will surely maintain everything. but i think it’s valuable to look back, organize, and store what you think is valuable.
first let's talk about HOW to back up your data. the "3-2-1 backup" strategy requires three copies of your data. your original data and two backups. nowadays this might seem a little extreme, but it can save you in a pinch!
the first file you have is probably on your phone or computer. that's good! already one down. the second should be in a different location. maybe an external hard drive. that's two! the third can probably be in a different hard drive, or flash drive, or on the cloud.
the strategy highly suggests you keep your files in different mediums AND different locations, too! for example: if your phone and your external hard drive are both at home, and your house burns down? you have lost your original file AND your backup. whoops! if you have everyone ONLY on the cloud, and the servers go down? you have lost access to all your files. whoops! this is by no means a perfect system, but its ideas of redundancy and access are good philosophies.
i think one overlooked thing about data management is accessibility. microsoft word and evernote for example have exclusive file formats that don't easily allow you to copy, save, and backup your data! for this very reason i suggest you try to maintain most of your data in widely accessible formats. this whole page is written in markdown for example, which is openable by practically any text editor!
these are more subjective. let's start with: when you should back up your data. it's kind of like saving in a game. are you willing to lose progress if you haven't saved yet? maybe you've barely done anything since your previous save and so a backup isn't important. maybe you only have a few files and it's not that big of a deal if they aren't saved right now.
i think the best times to save are: before AND after you make big changes. as well as when you've spent too long without saving. with my work: i'm actually pretty sloppy with backups. i backup my files around once every six months. the only exception is when i finish a big project.
one of the big questions... "what data should i back up?" this is a deeply subjective question. so you should stew on it for a while. for example: the subreddit r/datahoarder saves everything and i mean everything! from DVDs to movies, and everything in between. this obviously begins to fall into the "hoarding" catagory. i'm not necessarily an expert on clean storage. so i'll simply say: you should store the things that are valuable to you, and remove a lot more useless data that you for sure have. is that vague and unhelpful... absolutely.