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Organizations Come Behind First-ever World Backup Day
By Beecher Tuttle TMCnet Contributor
Apparently sick of hearing horror stories of consumers and IT professionals losing valuable information and content, the user community at Reddit spent yesterday raising awareness of the importance of data backup – with a celebration of sorts.
If you didn't notice, yesterday was World Backup Day, a brand-new holiday aimed at inspiring people to secure their precious data by backing up their hard drive. Users of the social bookmarking site Reddit proposed the initiative about a week ago and quickly launched a website and Twitter account to keep data backup fresh on the minds of your average PC owners and data center professionals.
"World Backup Day was created to spread awareness and to get those who have never backed up data to start," Reddit user Edman274 wrote on the site. "Once you learn how easy it is, you can do it anytime you want."
The folks behind World Backup Day did more than raise awareness of the ramifications of data loss though. The site's creators also offer readers a step-by-step guide on how to backup data using USB sticks, external hard drives or other resources.
The Reddit-inspired holiday comes at a time when the majority of users fail to backup the lives that the lead on their PC. A recent Consumer Statistics study found that nearly 90 percent of home PC users do not perform regular backups, even though two-thirds have suffered from a data loss at some point in their lives.
Moreover, only half of small- and medium-sized businesses backup their data on a weekly basis, with just 23 percent doing so each day, according to a Symantec (News - Alert) study. In a business setting, failing to backup information stored in a data center can lead to disastrous results.
Product performance testing by manufacturers of data center power hardware and software is also a key process in eliminating system failures. Edi Murway, head test engineer for Server Technology (News - Alert), a global leader in power distribution products and power monitoring software, recently sat down with TMC to discuss the company's decision to offer 100 percent performance testing on all of its data center power solutions.
Murway says that Server Technology performs thermal, shock and vibration, compliance, ATE and other tests on every one of the products that leaves its facility.
“I have been doing this for 40 years and in my experience with customers they really appreciate the due diligence being done prior to them getting it,” he said. “The worst thing for them is to open a box, plug it in and it doesn’t work.”
Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Carrie Schmelkin
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