Western Digital Global World Backup Day Survey Finds a Whopping 87% Actively Backup their Content

Consumers have become more reliant on personal data for everything from health records, financial documents, home video and photos, social media videos and more, and many are realizing the importance of backing up data.

Western Digital today announced the results of a global research study by Researchscape, where 87% of respondents cite that they backup their data automatically or manually. The top reasons for backing up personal data are fear of losing important files (83%), to free up space on their device (67%) and to protect against cyber threats (42%). 19% do it because they were told to.

"It's fantastic to see more people recognizing the importance of protecting their data," said Nitin Kachhwaha, Director of Product Management at Western Digital. "World Backup Day is an important yearly reminder to everyone to backup their data and to educate the people who still aren’t aware of the impact of failing to backup. It’s also an opportunity to reinforce just how critical it is to safeguard what matters most—because all it takes is one small accident for data to be lost forever. In fact, 63% of respondents have already experienced data loss due to device failure, accidental deletion or cyberattacks."

For those respondents who do not backup their personal data, 36% still think they don’t need to backup their data, 30% don’t have enough storage space, 29% think it takes too much time, and 23% don’t know how. 63% of respondents agree that they would backup data more frequently if it was automatic and effortless.

A dependable backup practice is to follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy, where consumers should have three copies of data, stored on two different types of media with one copy stored offsite, like in the cloud.

With free cloud storage limits quickly maxing out, many consumers are turning to a hybrid approach to protect their data. In the survey, 78% of respondents reported that they rely on free cloud storage, 60% have run out of space in the past six months, and 56% have had to upgrade to paid plans. Additionally, 35% find cloud storage increasingly expensive. This is driving more people to adopt a combination of both cloud and local external storage to ensure data protection and cost efficiency. External HDD storage, offering up to 26TB in a single drive, provides a cost-effective solution to complement the cloud, and many consumers are already embracing this approach — 45% use an external HDD, while 19% rely on network-attached storage (NAS). By diversifying storage methods, users can maintain reliable backups while managing growing cloud costs.

Western Digital provides consumers and businesses alike with easy-to-use data storage solutions that streamline the backup process and meet today’s growing storage needs. Western Digital recently unveiled higher capacities across its portfolio, including a 26TB¹ WD Red® Pro CMR HDD for NAS environments and an entire suite of 26TB-based G-DRIVE® and G-RAID® external storage solutions for consumers, creative professionals and content creators to help protect and enable their digital workflows. Consumers can also back up their digital life and take data on-the-go with the WD My Passport, 20^th Anniversary Edition with industry-leading 2.5” portable HDD capacity of up to 6TB. WD My Passport devices also include Acronis® True Image for Western Digital software to more easily schedule backups of precious data.

The results in this report are from an online survey of 6,118 respondents that was fielded from February 7 to 25, 2025 by Researchscape, an international market research consultancy. Respondents were from 10 different countries.

For more information about Western Digital’s storage portfolio, please visit www.westerndigital.com.

About Western Digital
Western Digital empowers the systems and people who rely on data. Consistently delivering massive capacity, high quality and low TCO, Western Digital is trusted by hyperscale cloud providers, enterprise data centers, content professionals and consumers around the world. Core to its values, the company recognizes the urgency to combat climate change and is on a mission to design storage technologies that not only meet today’s data demands but also contribute to a more climate-conscious future. Follow Western Digital on LinkedIn and learn more at www.westerndigital.com.

¹ One terabyte(TB) is equal to one trillion bytes. Actual user capacity may be less due to operating environment.

© 2025 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, the Western Digital design, G-DRIVE, G-RAID, My Passport, and WD Red are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other countries. Acronis True Image is a trademark of Acronis International GmbH. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Product specifications are subject to change without notice. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products will be available in all regions of the world.