We've all heard stories about computers 'just dying' at the worst possible moment; losing a vital report before an important meeting, irreplaceable wedding photographs disappearing right before an anniversary or your 5,000 word university thesis vanishes hours before the deadline. Horror stories like these are enough to make you never trust a piece of technology with your data again.

However, according to a recent global survey on the causes of data loss by Kroll Ontrack®, our hardware may be getting an unfair reputation as the main culprit behind data loss.

The newly published study found that human error is the most common cause of data loss. It’s not a slim margin either accounting for 40 per cent of all data loss, compared to 29 per cent attributed to hardware failures.

If you can’t trust yourself to keep your files safe, you need a fool-proof way to back up your files. Backing up manually is also at the mercy of our human judgement – forget to back up your files and they could be gone forever. That’s why we made Carbonite an automatic Online Backup system. You only set it up once and then forget about it until your own humanity strikes. Carbonite is simple backup, which you won’t notice is there until you really need it.