Computers, as we know them today, evolved from word processors. For many people the primary function of their computer remains the semi-archaic art of processing words into documents, and storing those documents on their fragile hard drive. Word processing remains an essential function for students, who are all getting back into the swing of academics as we speak. Unlike a picture or video a text document does not have any physical value (or decay) outside of its data stored on your hard drive. However, text documents can hold some of the most valuable information on your computer. For a student they can represent not only hours of writing, but also hours of research that go into that writing. As a professional, they can represent money on the clock, where if you lose the document you are also losing the hours you put into earning your wage. Documents are extremely small chunks of data that a modern hard drive can seemingly hold an infinite amount of; however that also means, they represent the most amount of time lost when your hard drive crashes.
When writing off the top of their head, the average computer user types at 19 words-per-minute (WPM); which adds up to about 14 minutes per page of actual typing time (not including time spent thinking about your next sentence). This means, at minimum, a folder containing 250mb of documents amounts to almost 3,800 hours of work.
Now, this is a fairly absurd amount of work that would take many years to accumulate. However, this is not a far fetched number considering how many documents are created (and shared) throughout the years. A hard drive can crash at any moment, and we have all likley heard stories of students losing their thesis the day before it’s due to a hard drive malfunction; it’s a nightmare that nobody should be subjected to.
