I'm really enjoying Seth's Blog. Today, he published an excellent, short post about why proper data archival is so important.
Passwords are lost, providers are hacked, and people pass away. Moreover, as Seth mentions, most companies aren't incentivized to make data reliability a priority because data reliability isn't exciting. Besides, human beings aren't very good at making long-term decisions. Very few people are clamoring for safeguards that will help them in ten years.
The lesson? Back up your data! Make extra copies of important files and share them with people you trust. If you have the need and the means, work with a company that truly understands archival. Otherwise, you may find, at the least opportune moment, that no one is doing it for you.