In the last week I’ve heard from three different friends who all experienced the same heart-stopping, stomach-emptying feeling of doom. The oh-shit-I’m-hosed, no-going-back, if-only feeling of true loss.

Those friends were separated by thousands of miles, and by gulfs of temperament. They are all united in being intelligent, creative people.

In at least two of the cases, the hours of gut-wrenching agony were replaced with vast relief. But even as they expressed their joy to the world, the did not (publicly) resolve to do anything to prevent the same disaster from striking again. They still aren’t backing up their digital files. Two of the three sphincter-clenching moments I witnessed this week were sponsored by lost flash drives.

Aargh! It’s SO DAMN EASY to back your stuff up these days. And free! Dropbox is brain-dead simple and works everywhere. For most people, why do you even have a flash drive? If you DO have a flash drive, why is this little thing that can drop through a hole in your pocket the sole repository of everything you hold dear? I say again, “Aargh!”

Ok, DropBox isn’t the most private cloud storage around (though it isn’t terrible — way better than Google). You can quite easily encrypt your files on DropBox, or perhaps you would prefer tersor.it. Swiss-based DropBox, basically. And speaking of Google, if you don’t mind who reads your stuff, the Goog’s a ubiquitous and free way to back your shit up.

In the IT world, there is a saying: “If it’s not in three places, it doesn’t exist.” I can forgive someone who only keeps their data in two places.

But one place? A flash drive? Sorry, buckaroo, you’re going to have to take my sympathy with an “I told you so.”