State of Backups in USA: Who’s Most at Risk

Published on June 8, 2021, this report was written by Yev Pusin, senior director of marketing, Backblaze, Inc.

The State of Backups: Who’s Most at Risk

June is Backup Awareness Month and we’re now in our 13th year of working with The Harris Poll to ask a simple question: “How often do you backup all the data on your computer?” We’re always interested to see how average folks think about their data, and what they use for their primary backups. This year we also asked people about their history with data loss, and whether or not they are firmly grounded on how “the cloud” works. The results may shock you.

How Backups Are Trending in 2021
Good news here, the results are positive. Of people who own a computer, more than ever are backing up daily, if not even more often: our 2021 number is 11%. This is only an increase of one percentage point over last year, which may not seem like much, but does underline a positive upward trend over the years (6% in 2018, 9% in 2019, and 10% in 2020).

As a computer backup provider, Backblaze is thrilled that backups and DR are increasingly top of mind for people.

At the other end of the spectrum, 20% of those who own a computer have never backed up all the data on their systems, led by people 65 and older at 31%. It’s time to go visit the grandparents and help them backup their computers.

While the number of people who never backup their computers is down about 54.5% from when the survey was started (35% in 2008 vs. 20% in 2021), that still means 1 in 5 people are at risk of losing all their data should they have a computer or systems failure. That’s too much precious data at risk.

Different Look
Below is a look at the detailed breakdown of backup frequency over the years the survey has been conducted.

In the chart above you can see that for the most part, things are pretty stable. The “never” category remains near the all-time low it reached last year, while yearly and monthly backups hold steady.

Looking at the pie chart, it’s nice to see that over the years the mix has become more spread out as the “never” category gets whittled down.

Overall, we take this to mean that data awareness remains at an all-time high, which is great news for people and their data.

Who Is Mythical “Best Backup Person?”
If we were to try find a person who is likely to be a “backer upper” (we define this as a person who owns a computer and backs it up at least once a day) here are some of the characteristics we’d look for: A woman between 35-44 years of age (21% likely to backup vs. 9% of those 18-34 and 6% of those 55-64), who lives in the Western United States (17% more likely to backup vs. the South and Midwest at 9% and 7%, respectively), and with a household income of over $100,000 (13% likely to backup their data vs. those households of $50,000-$74.9,000 which are at 6%).

Other Interesting Takeaways

Data Loss Is Big Deal
Like we mentioned above, 1 in 5 of those who own a computer and never backup their data are at risk of losing all the data on their computer, which is problematic. Especially when you consider that of the people who own a computer:
• 62% have lost data at some point.
• 76% have deleted something by accident.
• 51% have had an internal or external HDD crash.
• 52% have lost access to their data.
• 61% had a security incident (with 25% of those happening within the last year).

That 61% of those who report having a security incident is astonishingly high. When you consider that the best way to protect yourself from malware and ransomware is having up-to-date backups, we’re thrilled that 11% of computer owners are backing up daily, but we still have a long way to go.

“The Cloud” Less Confusing Than We Thought …
This year we also asked people if they understood how “the cloud” works. It turns out that 31% of Americans don’t understand how the cloud works, which is a lower number than we had expected. One guess for why? Covid-19. As more of the world went virtual this year, people had to familiarize themselves with the cloud in a hurry, so overall awareness and understanding increased.

… But Cloud Services Continue to Confuse
While generally people say they understand “the cloud,” confusion over the protection and functionality that cloud services can provide continues to be a problem. When asked, “What is the primary method you use to backup all of the data on your computer?” 61% of those who have ever backed up all data on their computer indicated that their primary backup method was “the cloud.” However, only 9% indicated that they were using an actual cloud backup service (like Backblaze). 36% of those who have ever backed up all data pointed to their primary backup being a cloud drive service like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, and 17% said their primary backup method was a cloud sync service like Dropbox or iCloud.

That may be the most troubling bit of data from this year’s survey. Backup and sync services are very different in nature and should be treated as complimentary, not equivalent services. We have a resource explaining the differences between cloud backup vs. cloud sync that you can read here.

The TL/DR is that backups should happen automatically, in the background, and shouldn’t rely on the person to take any action. They also shouldn’t be susceptible to someone removing the data from a shared or synced location. (Remember those 50% of people who lost access to their data?) Sync and cloud drive tools are great for collaboration (and we use them internally at Backblaze for just that reason) but they’re an “in addition to” tool, and shouldn’t be used in lieu of having proper backups in place.

Survey Method:
These surveys were conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of Backblaze among US adults ages 18+ who own a computer in May 12-14, 2021 (n=1,870); June 1-3, 2020 (n=1,913); June 6-10, 2019 (n=1,858); June 5-7, 2018 (n=1,871); May 19-23, 2017 (n=1,954); May 13-17, 2016 (n=1,920); May 15-19, 2015 (n=2,009); June 2-4, 2014 (n=1,991); June 13-17, 2013 (n=1,952); May 31-June 4, 2012 (n=2,176); June 28-30, 2011 (n=2,209); June 3-7, 2010 (n=2,051); May 13-14, 2009 (n=2,154); and May 27-29, 2008 (n=2,723). These online surveys were not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.