I had the great privilege of my hard drive dying 4th year university during exams / finals season. And so I had the great luck of paying "student rates" for a

I had the great privilege of my hard drive dying 4th year university during exams / finals season. And so I had the great luck of paying "student rates" for a data recovery service. That was a well worth early lesson in life :) Most people just cannot imagine losing all their data. They think it cannot happen, or it won't matter, or it will all be fine. What we have is a problem of imagination. I run through a simple exercise with my non techie friends whave have endless faith in technology : "if I went to your phone and laptop with a hammer right now and smash them to pieces, how much would you cry?" (Some tear up right then and there ; others still think it'd be fine until I ask some follow up questions to instantiate the risk:). Personally, I have scanned photos of childhood and tax and immigration and education and legal records and books I purchased and work documents and client photos from side photography gig and a million other things it'd be a pain to lose. So I have a local NAS and pay a cloud backup service and have reached my comfort level of data loss risk :). "Never lost data my whole life " is pure luck, and I wish it continues, but it's a bad plan - it's a bit of "I played Russian roulette and I'm fine!" :->