Backups can also have a psychological benefit. Once, on AA BOS-DFW, an FA bumped her hand on the seat back in front of me and spilled milk all over my laptop. (It didn't improve either of them.) Because I had a full disk image backup from the night before, I didn't freak out. As a result, the crew were incredibly nice; the pilot radioed ahead to DFW; I was met by their customer service manager with a printout of who I should call and what I should do; and to cut a long story short I had a check for $1,610 in my hand a few weeks later. (Most of the delay was because I didn't get a repair estimate until I got home.) Absent the backup, I doubt I would have stayed that calm. I know from what they said that the outcome would not have been as smooth, perhaps not even as fair financially.

Not so. The slowest component, by far, is the person using at the keyboard. The hard drive is at best* in second place, not even close.

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*Depending on what you're doing, network connections, printers, scanners and a few other things can also be ahead of even the slowest disk drive in this race to the bottom.