By Jarome Regan
Everyone knows someone affected by data loss. Whether they are photos of your children growing up, your thesis for school or client records for your business, a lot of your data is priceless and irrecoverable if lost.
Most computer users do not realize that the Achilles heel of all computers, Mac or PC, is the hard drive. The device we use to store all of our precious information, it turns out, is also the most susceptible to failure.
It is imperative that you plan for when your hard drive fails; not for if it fails.
Hard drives are incredible devices that changed computing forever. They were first introduced by IBM way back in 1956. While the technology has matured over the decades, the reality is, your hard drive is still using 50 year old technology to write information to multiple disks rotating as fast as ten thousand times per minute with a read arm “floating” just fractions of a millimeter between them. Let’s face it; hard drive technology may be amazing, but hard drives are disasters waiting to happen.
Data loss is not just limited to hard drive failures either. Data corruption can happen in many ways. Viruses, power outages, overlapped files and software bugs are just a few examples of data loss potential.
User error is also a huge component of data loss. I have come across many perfectly intelligent people who have accidentally erased their data. (If you do this, shut your computer down immediately, do not continue to use it, and take it to a data recovery specialist). In most consumer systems, deleted files are simply no longer protected and can be overwritten by the OS at anytime.
Nowadays there is a plethora of backup options. There is simply no excuse anymore to lose important data.
A simple hundred dollar external backup hard drive for your home or work computer can save you thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in data recovery costs, lost business, lost research, even the lost music you’ve spent so much money on at the iTunes store.
Here are some popular external hard drives on Amazon
Having your data on two different hard drives dramatically decreases your odds of data loss. Of course theft, fire or other “acts of God”, can be a problem too.
For home users, I usually recommend that when you go on vacation or are going to be away from your computer for an extended period of time, take your backup to work, or to a friend’s home. This way, in the unfortunate event of a burglary or fire, you may lose your computer, but the pictures and videos of your kids growing up will live on to see another computer.
For small businesses, I recommend a second backup hard drive
Mac users (running Leopard) really have no excuse not to backup – your OS includes possibly the best consumer level back-up system around: Time Machine. You can quite literally setup your backups within one minute if you are moderately proficient with your computer. Not so comfortable? It might take 5 minutes.
Windows users have the advantage of having more software options than Mac users. In addition, most external hard drives
There are also many on-line backup solutions that will automatically upload your critical data to servers on the internet. This is a great option as these companies generally have several redundant systems to ensure your data is safe. They often offer remote access to your data, so even when not in the office, you may be able to access data while you’re on the road.
Online storage is generally more costly than the one time cost of an external hard drive, but you may find the benefits worth it.
Popular options for online storage: Dropbox | Idrive | Jungledisk
As a computer technician I see data loss everyday. Users tend to have an “I didn’t think it could happen to me” attitude regarding data loss, but be assured: it can. Don’t forget that the manufacturer of your PC or Mac probably used the hard drive from the lowest bidder. Go out and pick up a backup hard drive – it could be the best $100 you’ve ever spent!
