What does it mean that he didn't have "a good way to backup that much data, so he never took one"?
The concepts behind backing up data have not changed. You need to manage the size of your data to redundantly fit into the storage of your system. So either pony up the cash and time to properly store your files, stop collecting TBs of crap, or stop complaining about losing it when your system crashes.
It's frustrating to see people continuously complaining about how they have too much data to back up cheaply and conveniently. It's even more frustrating to see them complaining about losing all of their data because they didn't back it up properly.
I think that the main issue is that most people do not realistically or conservatively plan their actual storage capability. For example, it seems like 90% computer users believe that having 4 TB of hard drive space means that they can safely store 4 TB of data.
After a conversation about scratch space, redundant drives, and timestamped backups, they then will grudgingly agree to allocate 25% of their available storage to RAID/Backup space, which obviously does not get the job done! Very few are willing to accept using 66% of their available hard drive space for RAID and Backups, which is really the minimum metric for any sort of storage longevity.
20 TB is an awkward amount of data for a non-corporate individual to be storing. It's more data than most people actually need for their media and it is getting into a very expensive price range to backup for basic music/movie content. (By expensive, I mean that it would be cheaper to just re-purchase the media rather than back it up.)