Backups in the modern world

Given the high reliability of most hard drives these days, I do wonder if many people have forgotten that this technology can occasionally fail. At work here (Not an IT environment), I have an automatic backup which runs every day. A lot of my collegues don't have such a safeguard though. Some younger ones have never experienced a hard disk failure so don't even consider they might happen. The irony is that with nearly all work environments using computers so extensively with less "hard copy" being kept data loss can be catastrophic! I wonder how many home-based computers back up regularly? Again, I know lots of people that don't citing reasons that it's just too hard to set up, they have to buy extra hardware etc. Some of the address books, pictures and home movies on those machines might be irreplaceable though. Although it's a lot rarer than it used to be technology still fails. In my working life, I've had about three catastophic HD failures. In each case, the existance on a "day before" backup mean it was an annoyance rather than a disaster! The latest was only two years ago. Anyway, I'm sure I'm preaching to the converted. (-: