Back when ISPs etc. would give you free (2-20 MB) storage, we'd use them for hosting personal websites, or just storage space - sometimes we'd register xx new/duplicate accounts, and we'd have a couple of hundred megs for storage.
Anyway, I blindly hosted a lot of personal stuff like that from 1998 - 2008, and never cared to do any backups.
But then one day, it was all gone forever - searched through my old email account, and found probably 5 remainder emails that the company was shutting down their services. Pictures, old demo songs, old websites, etc.
And these days - it could all happen again, if google ever bans your account (so go ahead and backup everything)