Don’t be an April fool!

World Backup Day1jpgBY HARNOOR GILL

Grade 11 student

Christ The King Catholic Secondary

Georgetown, Ontario

 

DATA stored in a computer is important and many people do not realize how important these files can be until they vanish. The loss of data can be tragic for those without a backup and it is imperative that important files are stored in another place other than your computer. The last day of March, which is the 31st of every year, is dedicated to World Backup Day. This day allows for raising awareness on the importance of backups and if you haven’t already, this is a chance for you to do an annual backup of your computer to an external hard drive or a cloud base on the Internet.

As mentioned before, it is very important to always back up files because you never want to lose what you have done on your computer in the past year. I personally recommend to always backup once a month due to any unexpected circumstances of a computer crashing on you. A backup is a smart action to do at least once a year because it is basically a second copy of all your important files from a computer. It is essentially another copy of everything that you have done which is kept safe from a computer malfunctioning and destroying data. In some circumstances, it can be very traumatic if all your data including family photos, videos, documents and even emails are gone forever just because you did not backup data.

Unfortunately, losing files is a lot more common than you might think and I happen to be a part of the 30% of people that had never backed up before. I believe it was the winter of 2013 when I received an email from an auspicious account that seemed to be a Microsoft moderator of some sort. At the time, I thought it was harmless and decided to open it without realizing what misfortunes were about to happen. At a glance, it looked official and to this day I still don’t realize why my outlook account didn’t stop it from coming to my inbox and placing it in junk for malware.

I recall that the email notified me to change my password due to someone attempting to access it and when I clicked the link, my computer froze. I didn’t think much about the computer freezing because it had done this from time to time so I simply restarted it. Upon restarting it, my computer could not carry out simple tasks such as opening up a browser or creating a Word document. The horrible reality came, my computer had encountered a virus and my files that I had never backed up for the past year were slowly going away. To this day, I have now backed up my data monthly onto an external drive and rather than taking it negatively, I took it as a learning moment.

My personal experience of losing data has allowed me to realize how important it really is to backup important files. I am thankful that I realized my mistake at such a young age, which allowed me to learn from it and make it a part of my lifestyle. I encourage everyone to support World Backup Day 2015 and make it a priority to backup data at least once a year.

Make a pledge on the official website of World Backup Day to backup data and please tell friends and family about this important day by telling them to not be an April fool!