1/2/08
PSA: Only You Can Prevent Data Loss
General Babble
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We all know to back up our computers. Even so, I’d be willing to bet a large portion of people in this game don’t do so. I admit to being one of those lazy ass people. On Christmas Eve, at about 6:30 p.m., my laptop refused to boot.
Three incredibly hellish days later, when the stores finally re-opened, I was informed that my hard drive had failed and that only about 25 percent of it could be recovered.
Now, Santa didn’t completely hate me it seems - they were able to save most of my business files which would have undoubtedly been the biggest loss.
But, I still lost a lot… including every picture I’ve taken in the last five years, all of my downloaded music, my downloaded and personally recorded videos, every personal document I’ve ever written that wasn’t in the business files, any program I downloaded and didn’t have a disk copy of, all of my bookmarks and passwords and all of my daughter’s scanned artwork from her seven years of drawing them.
All of this could have been prevented had I taken the time to buy a external hard drive and back it my laptop up to it once a week (once I have files again, I plan to follow this procedure).
I am now the proud owner of a 500 GB TrekStor DataStation for about a hundred bucks (granted, boxing day sale). Is your data worth 100 dollars to you?
So please see this post as a public service announcement. Not only do I have to spend hours basically re-loading every file and program I utilize onto my computer, but I now only have one fourth of the data I did last week.
Back up your computer if you’re guilty of being lazy like me.
Pass this along to a friend you know is computing without protection.
Only *you* can prevent data loss.
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Rae Hoffman
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Yep, that happened to me a few years ago, I lost every picture of my sister’s wedding. Now I back all of my photos up to Flickr and leave it at that. I really should get off my backside and do the external drive thing though, especially since my desktop keeps mumbling about registry conflicts…
Oh Rae, I am SO sorry to hear of your loss. I’ve experienced that horror recently, when both my main computer AND my backup drive failed… I thought I had lost everything - including 6 years worth of irreplacable photos (including all our baby photos - sob!).
Turns out my external backup was indeed totally pooched, but the HD in my computer only had a few bad sectors and I was able to crack it out of the box and pop it into another shell - and I retrieved everything, even 12 years worth of archived email + attachments. phew!
MP3s are replaceable, albeit possibly expensive. But personal photos can’t be bought on iTunes, :( that makes me so sad
I too acquired a 0.5Tb external this season, and have a rigorous *daily* backup system, plus I do a full backup every time I offload the contents of my digital camera.
Though it’s unusual for both main and backup storage to die at once, it happened to me and it could happen to anyone. I’ve considered moving to a RAID 5 (safe and distributed storage using a pile of redundant disks). When finances allow, I’m going to replace the HD in my desktop with a RAID.
My 4 tips to avoid data loss heartbreak:
1) back up often, and in more than one place
2) burn burn burn. Once a month, burn all important things onto DVD-R or CDR, and stow them away somewhere cool and dry. Discs are CHEAP. Use them liberally.
3) use online or server-based storage… eg for business and online assets, keep them in a versioning system like Subversion hosted somewhere trustworthy.
4) always have a hard copy of all passwords and important account info. Keep a little black book near you and write passwords in it religiously. Not only will it save you when you need a login, but it will be there for your heirs and executors when you croak.
Get a second opinion before giving up on your old HD…
I’d also suggest checking out one of the online offsite backup companies mozy and carbonite both backup your data for $5-$7 a month for personal accounts. Be warned when they first start they are slower than molasses during a Siberian winter though.
Having had a friend … yeah we’ll with that… who was 8 years old burn the second floor off his house once, having off site backups, is a requirement for me.
“Real men don’t do back up - but they cry a lot” - translated from a Danish saying.
I know exactly what you went through. Been there - done that - got the T-shirt.
I agree with the “webwitch”: Get a second opinion on the old HD. Some times miracles do happen.
Happy New Year!
That sucks. I’m really sorry to hear that. I’m bad at this too - the only things I store elsewhere are photos, which make their way onto most of the social networking sites I belong to.
Good to hear you retained the business files.
I’m definitely getting a second opinion from a specialist - since you’re local to me http, if you could recommend anyone, that would be awesome.
A lot of my photos are on the social sites EXCEPT the ones of my kids growing up which are absolutely the most important. Including my son’s birth, etc. The whole thing blows.
Hello, my name is Rae, and I am a reformed non backupper.
Backing up on an external drive won’t protect you in case of fire, flooding etc. etc. And allthough most people luckily can say “that’ll probably never happen to me”, you personal files today are worth more to you than say an old hischool photoalbum.
So I’d definately recommend backing your stuff up to some kind of external location. Either via one of those cheap online services, or atleast make a copy on a DVD of your external harddrive every 3-6 months and store it at your moms/dads/friends house.
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If you have multiple computers in your house you might want to look at Windows Home Server for a central file location. It also performs backups on each computer joined to it nightly and allows both file level restores and system restores in case of a lost hard drive.
A lot of other features and add ons also available even with the limited time it has been released. Can get a decent system up with it for under $1K easily.
@Soren - the TrekStor will be at my office as its home while the laptop travels everywhere. That said, if there were a fire in my office while I was here and wasn’t able to grab the laptop, that would be a problem - maybe I should buy another DataStation to leave at home as well.
@graywolf with all your paranoia, you use online backup services?
@Dave that is an awesome idea, but prob one I won’t do for a few years… my laptop is it :) - the kids computers don’t need backing up… but in a few years they probably will when my daughter starts blogging… since I’m far from technical, I’ll only do the work to create that kind of setup when abs necc - as I always say - I’m an Internet gek, not a computer geek - and there’s a big difference ;-)
Rae,
What is the brand and model of the hard drive in your laptop? If you sent it to a local repair shop they may not be up on the most advanced recovery techniques.
In the past I have had luck recovering 90% of a drive that the repair shop said was lost. If you give me the brand and model I could suggest some specialists that may be able to help.
I feel your pain!
I too learned this lesson the hard way except the funny business my computer was doing caused me to back everything up to a newer, less used machine.
My data is now safe on a external hard drive. I don’t hardly ever look at any of that old stuff but the thought of losing it makes me sick.
Oh I have learned. I spent a bit more, I have LOTS of music and pics, so went with something that can grow with me - I got myself a Drobo. I knew that if I got a big external system that didn’t protect itself I would get into trouble again - Drobo does all the data protection for me, and it is VERY easy to setup.
Hi Rae, After reading you for a long time, I feel compelled to write. I started backing up my data about 6 months ago to an external hard drive. Although I usually ignore my weekly reminder, I usually backup my computer about once every 3 weeks. One thing that I’ve been planning to do (and I’ll order it as soon as I put the kids to bed) is a second external hard drive - one to keep connected to my computer, and one to keep in my fire-safe box, which I bought months ago for this purpose. My plan is to switch them every other backup.
I bought the fire-safe box after a client’s house burned down. Like your story, it made me think about how I’d feel if I lost all my important stuff, and since then, I’ve been keeping backed-up photo CD’s in the fire-safe box. I’m also in the process of converting mini-DV’s from my camcorder to DVD’s and putting these in my fire-safe box, too.
Every momento that you wrote that was lost was painful to me, so I can’t even imagine how you feel.
I love your blog!
This post learns to us we should take back after a period or going before on any holiday and tour. I can feel your paint because I have also suffered this problem last months because of getting enjoy in holidays. I had lost my data for two important sites and could not get back. I have to again work on those site at start up. Thanks to share this important post.
I hope this New Year story from Youmozz will make it easier for you:
I once lost an entire web site this way. I failed to back the files up from my PC’s hard drive. The PC crashed, losing the web site files with it. While the PC was being worked on, there was a problem with my internet service provider’s servers that caused me to lose the entire site. Luckily, it wasn’t that big of a site to begin with.
Hi,
I’ve suddenly realised the backup device I do have, I’m actually just using as extended storage so I’m currently investigating what I can buy to backup my backup device!?!? (sounds mad I know!)
http://www.skillett.com/index.php/498/backup-space-what-a-minefield
What a nightmare! Something similar happened to me on Christmas Eve ‘04. I’m still feeling the repercussions from my week-long rant that ensued: Some members of my family STILL won’t speak to me!
I like the DVD-R/CD-R plus external hard drive route. I burn a few discs now and then and put them in a box. When a box fills up I move it to a different location (friends/family). That way if my house burns and the computer/external drive are both toast, I still have something.
Oh, and something like spinrite may be able to recover the data on your disk.
did you try spinwrite ?
Here’s a completely different take on the backup issue:
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/backups/
The author (James Brausch) has developed a system where he never needs to back-up his computer, and how this makes him dramatically more successful… even though his computer completely crashed.
Interesting perspective…
Cheers,
Jim
We learned to backup after my wife’s HDD crashed on her desktop. Now we both have an external drive that we do backup to religiously.
Man, having a drive crash really can stink! At least you now are set to do your backups!
I thought the RAID setup on my main computer (two hard drives containing identical data) were probably a waste — until my computer network guy pointed out that one drive was “going”. A few days later, the new hard drive arrived; we swapped it in place of the one that was slowly(?) failing, booted up the machine, and it copied all the data to the new blank drive. No copying, reinstalling or anything else — and added benefit: no need to defrag!
We also do backups both to an external drive and CDs/DVDs.
I can also recommend Belarc Advisor (belarc.com), a free program which builds a detailed profile of what you’ve installed on your machine. Very handy when you need it.
