14 DAY TRIAL // Internet users have taken it upon themselves to establish March 31 as World Backup Day, a day during which everyone should make sure their important files are properly backed up.
The proposal was made a week ago on social news website Reddit by a user named adamjeff who wrote at the time that "I just think it would be for the good of everyone to have a reminder to save all your cherished pictures, videos and other important data to somewhere secure."
It seems the idea of such a day resonated with the Reddit community and people started discussing possible dates, as well as backup methods and best practices.
Eventually March 31 was chosen, probably in order to help prevent data loss caused by April 1st pranks.
A dedicated site was also created and filled with information about why it's a good idea to keep backups and what are the options to do it.
The more traditional way of backing up data is to burn it on optical media (CDs or DVDs). However, in recent times this has been replaced by the use of external hard drives and USB memory sticks.
People should be aware, though, that storing backups on a drive that remains connected most of the time to the computer is not a very good idea. In case of an infection with a file destructing malware, like we've recently seen, the backed up files could be compromised too.
The new trend in backup operations is to use cloud storage and sync services. These usually come with an yearly subscription, but have the benefit of protecting people's data even in the case of disasters like floods, fires or earthquakes.
There's not much value in using an external hard drive for backup if it is later destroyed in an event beyond the user's control.
Four companies working in the online backup business, namely SpiderOak, Backblaze, MiMedia and Crashplan, have stepped forward with special offers available for today. Make sure to heck them out on the worldbackupday.net website.