EXTERNAL BACKUPS

I mentioned that I would talk a bit more about the hard drive crash I suffered.

I talked to a true "geek" friend about the whole event.  He commiserated at the loss and told me some options I had to recover the data lost.  Not like it is a huge secret but he informed me about a couple companies that recover the information on a dead drive.  He was gracious in explaining how they do it and the time and expertise involved.  Finally, he got to the main point, cost.

Now knowing what they do to salvage the data, I had a better understanding of the figures he hit me with.  None of them were cheap but I really wasn't prepared to hear that it could cost as much as $1000 to "attempt" to recover the information.  No promises either on whether they get anything off the drive that is understandable.  If it was a "head crash", ALL information could be toast.

Not good.  Not good at all.

He talked about back-ups after that.  His recommendation (which is what we did) is to get an external hard drive and use that as for storage.  And, he told me not to waste money on after market software, that most OS platforms have back-up utilities that will do the job built right into them.  He also told me that almost every HD manufacturer has utilities to check the external HD to make sure it is functioning right.  That way, if you do a regular back-up, you can check the storage drive each time before doing the back-up.

As I mentioned, Dudette and I were already there.  We picked up an external HD large enough to do several complete system back-ups on both machines.  That way we have a full restore of not only the current system but of a previous system in case something we installed recently ended up being corrupt.

My friend told me that, like me, he had total loss failures happen to him.  Most people don't consider, or appreciate, doing back-ups on a regular basis until they suffer a serious crash.  Usually it only takes one to convince people that just like with cars, accidents happen.  A back-up is the computer equivalent of buying insurance.  You never know IF you're going to need it, but you can't buy it when you DO need it.

Learning happens.

Comments

[bogie]

I always backed up my Quicken stuff on a floppy, but after I blew up my hard drive a couple of years ago, I started backing up other stuff too (like My Documents). The last hard drive has some pictures and school projects that I would have liked to keep. But. it wasn't worth (at that time) $700 for me to send it to a recovery company.