Storage Effect

36% of consumers have “priceless” data, but few back it up

Check out the results of a Harris Interactive to poll commissioned by Seagate:
U.S. consumers were asked, “If you had to put a price tag on your digital content (photos, documents, movies, music, etc.), stored on your computer(s), how much would that be?”

- 10% said their data was worth nothing (I don’t understand these people)
- 30% said it was worth $1 to $1,000
- 19% said it was worth $1,000 to $5,000
- 5% said it was worth over $5,000
- 36% said it was priceless

If an average PC costs about a thousand dollars, more than half of us think what’s on our hard drive is worth more than the PC it resides on.

I shouldn’t be too surprised, given the sheer quantity of stuff that people are saving.  How many iTunes songs do they own at $1 a pop?  How about last season’s TV shows, or the DVDs they ripped?  But it’s the personal content that takes the value of their digital stuff beyond $1,000.

More surprising: over a third consider this information priceless. As in irreplaceable.  I wonder how many of these folks back up their data?  From what I’ve heard, more don’t than do.

Sounds like a potential Visa commercial: “Downloading the new Bruce Springsteen album: $9.99. Downloading Season 3 of The Office: $34.99.  Converting my parents’ wedding movies to digital: $100.  Recovering it all after my PC crashes: priceless.”

Isn’t this is a huge opportunity for solution providers?  Whether building the system or selling through someone else’s box, seems like one could build a good business helping consumers get the most out of the information, rather than the PC.  And/or helping them keep it safe. How are you doing this?

What is your own data’s worth?  What’s priceless to you?  Do you backup your personal data?