Happy World Backup Day!

By Mark Redfern, Website Marketing Manager @ LexisNexis Risk Solutions

I like to celebrate March 31^st, not because it’s the day before April Fools’ Day, but because it is a reminder to do something a little more serious; backing up your important data. I know, boring! However, after a close call many years ago when I had my hard drive die the night before a client presentation, I became a believer in regular backups. Today, I ask that you take the World Backup Day[1] pledge: “I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.”

Yes, there is a website https://worldbackupday.com, and it has some helpful resources linking to the most popular cloud services and external hardware options for individuals and small businesses. The site also provides some basic directions for alternate methods of backing up your data, so you don’t need to purchase a service or buy an expensive external backup drive to protect yourself. Keep in mind that there are more options today, so no matter what your budget or technical skill level, you can make a copy of your important files in case of an emergency.

Here are some recommended Cloud Backup services: Backblaze, iDrive, Acronis, LiveDrive

Cloud Storage For storing smaller amounts of photos or files:

• https://www.icloud.com – 5 GB Free
• OneDrive – 5 GB Free
• Google Cloud – 15 GB Free
• MEGA – 20 GB Free

Fantastic! Now that we are all backing up our data and everything is secure from random hardware failures or ransomware attacks, we need to talk about the issue of the ever-growing mass of files and data. Here is a chart from the “Data Age 2025 The Digitization of the World From Edge to Core” report that shows the expected growth of saved data[2].

Some interesting facts from the study.

• One zettabyte is equivalent to a trillion gigabytes.
• If you were able to store the entire Global Datasphere on DVDs, then you would have a stack of DVDs that could get you to the moon 23 times or circle Earth 222 times.
• If you could download the entire 2025 Global Datasphere at an average of 25 Mb/s, today’s average connection speed across the United States, then it would take one person 1.8 billion years to complete it.

Data growth is growing fast and this includes everything from duplicate files to IoT device files and data. With this increasing file growth comes the problem of data bloat.

Here are the top seven services for PC devices that you might want to consider as a solution to find and remove duplicate files, as shown on https://fixthephoto.com[3]

1. dupeGuru – Premium free identical file finder
2. XYplorer – Performs drag-and-drop file operations
3. Easy Duplicate Finder – Features the most adjustable file scan settings
4. Wise Duplicate Finder – The greatest automatic deletion function
5. AllDub – Premium features for experts
6. Duplicate File Detective – Can export files in various formats
7. CloneSpy – The earliest replica file finder

So now that we are backing up all of our data, and removing duplicate files to ensure that we are not creating unnecessary file bloat, the next logical step is to apply some taxonomy or tagging to file names. Without diving into enterprise-level knowledge management, data governance best practices or Taxonomy 101[4], I would like to offer some quick ways to organize and tag your files.

Let me provide a little background about myself. I have held several agency roles helping clients with their paid search and social campaigns and provided campaign and site analytics reporting to make directional campaign improvements. Most of the work was project-based with set beginnings and ends that contained planning, creative and reporting documents. We always made sure that the work that we provided was properly documented, so we were able to quickly reference the client-approved project documentation if there were any questions or client-requested changes to the project’s deliverables. Having a standardized tagging/file naming convention was extremely helpful in being able to find previously run project documentation. If a client wanted to run a similar campaign from a year or two back, then we could quickly reference the previous campaign’s creative briefs and performance reporting. These documents then allowed us the opportunity to apply postmortem learnings from the original campaign to improve the new campaign.

I believe that I have made the case for a couple of reasons why adding some rigor and tagging to your file naming conventions is important, and here are a couple of examples worth considering.  

Client_Group-Office_Project_Campaign_Channel_Date_Version

• Client = client name
• Group-Office = agency office or group assignment
• Project = project name describing product or services covered by the scope of work
• Campaign = descriptive name or subject that describes the subset scope of work
• Channel = the type of campaign or channel that the campaign covers for example an email campaign sent to the client’s customer database
• Date = insertion date or the campaign start date. Also, start and end date ranges
• Version = each version of a document would be updated to track iterations

Other optional file naming options:

• Starting the file name with the YYYY.MM.DD date allows for chronological sorting and searches
• Adding brackets with a category tag [category][second tag] allows for easier sorting and search
• Removing all spaces with “-“ or “_” to ensure that weblinks do not have special characters
• Camel Casing your file name terms will also help with faster visual searches and easier taxonomy searches. For example: Acme_Atlanta_Google-PaidSearch-B2B_March22_v1

Another recommendation is to avoid using cryptic abbreviations or complex naming codes that would make deciphering the file’s name difficult without a decoder. You want to future-proof your file naming schema so it is obvious and easy to understand.

My last recommendation is to get in the habit of naming and saving your documents when you start. I cannot tell you the number of hours of lost time that I have spent recreating documents because my laptop crashes or freezes before I could save my work.

I hope that this information has been helpful. If you have any other file search, tagging or taxonomy recommendations, then please comment below.

[1] https://worldbackupday.com/en

[2] https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf

[3] https://fixthephoto.com/best-duplicate-file-finders-for-windows-10.html

[4] https://www.kmworld.com/