World Backup Day
Next: March 31, 2027
Save a copy before tomorrow's jokes.
The story
Where it comes from
World Backup Day began on 31 March 2011. Ismail Jadun, then a student at Youngstown State University in Ohio, read a discussion on Reddit in which someone who had lost a hard drive wished they had been reminded to back up. With help from a fellow Reddit user he built a website in a week and declared a day for it. The date was a joke with a point: the day before April Fools' Day, so that no one gets caught out by lost files.
How it's celebrated
Tech sites, schools and companies remind people to copy their photos, documents and messages to a second place, such as an external drive or a cloud service. The organisers want to reach people who have never backed up in their lives. It is a good day to save the family photos twice, and to help an older relative do the same.
Did you know
- The organisers say a good backup plan is continuous, so World Backup Day is really every day.
- The day is also meant to start conversations about preserving our growing digital heritage and cultural works for future generations.
- Reddit itself invited computer users around the world to join the second World Backup Day, in 2012.
Coming up next
- April Fools' Day · April 1, 2027
- International Children's Book Day · April 2, 2027
- World Autism Awareness Day · April 2, 2027
- The First Mobile Phone Call · April 3, 2027
- Taiwan Children's Day · April 4, 2027
- International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action · April 4, 2027