Exactly my thought when reading this. From my experience as an Ops guy I can say that in my opinion all storage media is perishable.

And also that most friends know that they should back-up as when shit hits the platter the first thing they say is: "I know I should have backed up and my latest is from September last year, can you help me?"

At least with OSX, backups are made very easy for you via Time Machine and even better a Time Capsule.