Many ways to lose your data
From juliano.info
Some of the many ways you may lose your data. Just a reminder on the importance of backups.
Natural disasters
- An earthquake will cover your computer with a few tons of masonry, destroying it
- A flood will submerge your computer in water, destroying it
- A tornado will take your computer (and the rest of your building) away
- A lighting will strike a nearby distribution pole, frying your computer
Other casualties
- A conflagration will transform your computer into a pile of contorted iron
- The smoke alarm will not exist, will not work properly or there will be nobody nearby to act
- The fire extinguisher will not exist, will be empty, will be expired or broken
- In the case the fire extinguisher is fine, nobody will know how to use it or nobody will care about it
- In the case somebody do use the fire extinguisher, the wrong type will be used
- In a traffic accident, your laptop will take off through the windshield.
- Your computer, laptop or cellphone will be stolen
- You will forget and lose your laptop, cellphone or flash drive somewhere
Hardware defects
- The many mechanical parts of your hard-disk will wear out and break
- The memory cells of your solid-state drive will wear out and stop working
- A defect in another hardware component (e.g. RAM) may corrupt your files
Software defects
- A defect (bug) in your operating system may corrupt your files
- A defect (bug) in some application you use may overwrite your files
- A vulnerability in your operating system or some application may allow an attacker to control your computer, and erase your files
Incorrect operation
- A virus or some other kind of malware will erase all your files
- You will make a mistake and erase some important files
- You will clean the recycle bin before you notice that you erased those files
- Otherwise, you will be the type of user that deletes everything using Shift-Del so that you don't have to bother with the wastebasket
- Someone else who uses your computer may make a mistake and erase your important files
- Your children had to "make space" in order to install the latest game you bought to them
- You will confuse your flash drives and "format" the wrong one
- Or perhaps one of your hard disks (was the flash drive on F: or G:?)
- You will forget your memory cards inside your car, under the sun, on a very hot day, all day long
- You will clash into your flash drive while it is plugged, breaking it (and your USB port)
- Your external hard-disk may fall onto the ground
- You may forget the password you used to protect those files (or perhaps your entire partition)
Third-party
- Your cloud-based storage/backup service may experience some severe data-loss accident
- Your cloud-based storage/backup service may go out-of-business, taking your data with them
- Your automatic or remote backup solution may be configured improperly, and the resulting archive doesn't contain some or all your files.
