Backing up data is something we have been told to do for decades but it is not exciting nor fun and very easy to forget. Additionally, situations requiring the need to restore a file from backup can be rare so it’s easy to understand why many people don’t back up their files even though it’s an important part of life with computers. Think of backups like an insurance policy. You do it in case you need it and hope that you never need to use it.

As consumers and general computer and Internet users, we all have to be our own IT manager and system administrator which means that backups are an important part of our job. While we all know that we should back up our data, some of you may not know why we need these backups.