A couple of prominent web services have completely lost their data over the past few months and I mean everything!

Ma.gnolia
According to SitePoint’s podcast, Ma.gnolia, a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious lost their entire database. Every single person who kept their bookmarks on this website lost everything and will now have to rebuild their store of website bookmarks.

Journalspace
I also heard on SitePoint’s podcast that Journalspace, a blogging platform similar to WordPress(.com), lost all of their data. This means that every single member of Journalspace lost every single blog post. As any blog author knows, that is devastating!

Why & What You Can Do
Why did this happen? These websites did not back up their data properly. As a result, if the information was deleted on one (or two servers) then everything was erased. This is exactly what occurred in both of the aforementioned examples.

When it comes to your data (i.e. blog posts, personal photos, important documents, videos of the children) do not trust anything. Regularly back it up in multiple places.

Here is an example of how I back up this blog. I schedule automatic backups using an easy WordPress plugin called wp-db-backup. I save that back-up file to the computer in my office and then also back-up the entire drive to another location. With your data always err on the side of caution.

Do Not Be the Chalkboard
Essentially, if you do not back up your information, your data is no more than words on a chalkboard. All it takes is for someone (or something) to come by and wipe it clean and you have lost everything.

The chalkboard photo is courtesy of House Of Sims at Flickr.