Today, March 31, is World Backup Day. If you don’t know, now you know! Some years ago, we and other denizens of the internet got together because we felt that the joy of protecting your data was worthy of celebration. Each year on this day, we encourage folks to take the pledge to backup their data. This year, we wanted to share some fun facts we pulled about our Backblaze Personal Backup service, and throw in a few things we’ve learned from our yearly backup poll as well. Spoiler: We do that poll again every year in June for Backup Awareness Month, so come visit us again then and we’ll review the trends.
The Who and Where of Backup
A caveat about this data: If you’re familiar with Backblaze, you know we have a few different services, including Backblaze Personal Backup, Backblaze Business Backup, and Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. This article will only be referencing data from our Personal Backup service.
And, shout out to Simple Maps for providing us with geographic info that we mapped to our data.
The Winners: Which Cities Back Up the Most?
To be clear, we think anyone who’s backing up is a winner. But in this section, we decided to talk about both the cities with the most users per capita and the number of users in a city. Given that the second option rewards bigger cities, we thought it was a little unfair to just present that data.
2022 Top 5 Cities Where You’re Most Likely to Run Into a Backblaze User
Here, we take a look at the cities with the most Backblaze licenses per capita.
- Pacific Palisades, CA: 136.6
- Winnetka, IL: 129.1
- Orinda, CA: 128.2
- Beverly Hills, CA: 126.2
- Mill Valley, CA: 117.1
Good job California and a very special shout out to Winnetka! Way to go!
2022 Top 5 Cities With the Most Backblaze Users
And, here, we look at cities with the highest number of users.
- New York, NY: 8,401
- Los Angeles, CA: 6,754
- Brooklyn, NY: 5,587
- San Francisco, CA: 5,117
- Seattle, WA: 5,021
The Potential: The Places We Want to Give Some Back Up Love To
Hey, we get it: we’re passionate about a relatively nerdy thing. (Back up. It’s still back up.) That said, we’re always looking for ways to spread the love and peace of mind that comes from data protection.
2022 Top 5 Cities Least Likely to Run Into a Backblaze User
Here’s where we look at cities with the least Backblaze users per capita.
- Lynwood, CA: .14
- Arecibo, PR: .17
- Trujillo Alto, PR: .17
- Carolina, PR: .17
- Vega Baja, PR: .18
Clearly, we haven’t been giving Puerto Rico enough love. We’re sorry, Puerto Rico! We’d love to chat about back up with you.
2022 Cities With the Fewest Users
You might be noticing a pattern. Here, we look at cities with the least number of users in our database—so, cities with one license, because there are also cities with zero users. But to figure out which cities those are, we’d have to find a list of ALL the cities in the U.S. and deduplicate it against our list of cities with at least one license. It would be a whole thing. Let it suffice to say, there are cities with zero users, and we hope someday they have more.
- Arecibo, PR: 1
- Canovanas, PR: 1
- Carolina, PR: 1
- Lynwood, CA: 1
- Trujillo Alto, PR: 1
- Vega Baja, PR: 1
- Waianae, HI: 1
Given the amount of objectively beautiful places on this list, we’d love to assume you’re all busy outdoors and not stuck behind a computer.
State of Affairs
Okay, we’ve talked about cities, but things get even more interesting when you filter this by state instead. Buckle up, folks!
States With the Most Users Per Capita
- Washington, D.C.: 26.04
- Vermont: 21.67
- Oregon: 21.60
- Washington: 20.67
- Colorado: 19.99
Finally, a list California didn’t make. (It’s number seven.) It’s super interesting when you compare this to the cities with the most users per capita, especially because our winner in that category has 136.6 compared to our winner here with 26.04.
Even if you take out Washington, D.C. (some folks might argue that it’s more fair to call it a city), Vermont comes in with 21.67 statewide. That’s less than a fifth of the concentration of users you’d find in Pacific Palisades, CA.
States With The Most Cities With Only One License Per Capita
Some nuance here: This doesn’t mean states with the least number users, but rather states with the most cities with only one license. So, in essence, this list favors states that have a lot of cities.
- Pennsylvania—177
- New York—172
- Texas—166
- Illinois—126
- Ohio—126
- Iowa—112
- Minnesota—111
- Michigan—111
- California—106
- Indiana—101
Look at that! Some of our standouts above become a little less impressive when you get here. And, we’d like to note that California has made all but one of the lists so far: proof that backup stories are no simple matter of “best” and “worst”.
The Even Bigger Picture
There are even more stories to tell when you compare this to our yearly backup poll. According to our data, only 12% of computer users use a cloud backup service like Backblaze. That means that the numbers we’re showing you here are a portion of the 12% of computer owners overall.
Still, the person most likely to be a backer upper—someone who owns a computer and backs it up at least once a day—likely lives in the Western United States. Even though we’re working with a smaller data set, it’s interesting to see that our data still reflects overall trends.
Celebrate With Us!
We hope you enjoyed our foray into data as much as we did. Feel free to take the World Backup Day pledge, reach out to us on socials, or comment below if you want to know more. And, check back in June to see the newest backup survey.
Until then, happy backing up!
