The difference is that we knew that the Y2K bug was coming. It was a given that we were going to end up reaching 1/1/2000. Here, it's not a given that backups w

The difference is that we knew that the Y2K bug was coming. It was a given that we were going to end up reaching 1/1/2000. Here, it's not a given that backups will ever need to be touched. Spending a lot of money to fix something that is known will happen is easy to justify. If you don't do it, you will end up losing significant amounts of money. For something that isn't guaranteed to happen, it's harder to justify putting a lot of money into it. What is the value of doing thorough testing of backups if they're never actually accessed? One could argue that it's purely a waste of money.