> didn't think that his livelihood was worth backing up

Came here to make this exact point. Not to kick someone who's already down, but for god's sake people: If you do not do backups, your data is ephemeral.

There's only so many times one can hear sob stories about people losing all their un-backed-up data, especially from people who should know better, before one stops feeling all that sorry. Don't complain to me if you roll the dice and lose.