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Backup
Your Priceless Memories
Data loss can
be a big problem for any business, but sometimes it’s an even bigger
issue for home users. Think about all the family pictures you keep
stored on your computer, the e-mails between family and friends,
the home videos, etc. In today’s world, most home computers contain
data that you simply cannot put a price on.
Just for a moment,
while you’re sitting there reading this, think about what’s on your
computer. Maybe you have digital pictures celebrating the birth
of your baby girl, or maybe it’s a graduation video. I’m asking
you….no, I’m begging you….if you have anything like that on your
system and it’s not backed up, back it up today!
Data recovery
companies can help you, but the costs can be high, and in some cases
the data is simply unrecoverable. Last year we received a case that
really hit home with how important it is to back up personal data.
A gentleman
sent his crashed drive in for recovery, and over the phone, the
symptoms he was describing didn’t sound good at all. The drive had
been making some unusual noises, wouldn’t spin up properly, and
was not seen by the system BIOS. This is usually indicative of a
major mechanical issue with the drive.
The man said
he would pay anything…..anything at all…..no matter how big the
cost, to recover the data on that hard drive. Obviously very emotional,
he then informed the tech that the drive had pictures of his daughter
who had been killed recently, and he had no backup of them. It was
probably one of the most heartbreaking moments imaginable. This
was not someone’s Quickbooks file, or a years worth of spreadsheet
data, this was someone’s life. This was one of the few things this
man had to remember his daughter. You simply cannot put a price
on something like that.
After much work,
we were able to get a good image of the drive and eventually got
to the point where a recovery of the data could be made. Everyone
had their fingers crossed, hoping beyond hope that they had been
able to make it work. You can imagine the excitement as a search
for images from the recovered data was performed and thousands of
pictures of this man’s daughter were found. It was an unbelievable
moment, and his reaction was beyond words.
While this particular
case had a happy ending, 2 or 3 out of every 10 cases won’t be so
happy. It’s just a fact within the industry that around 20-30% of
the hard drives received will not be recoverable, either due to
excessive platter damage or severe data corruption. Why even take
the chance?
Please, go out
and buy yourself one of the many cheap and affordable external backup
devices available at just about any store. If you can afford it,
buy two of them and keep them in two separate locations. This may
seem extreme, but trust me, if you ever hear that “click of death”
coming from your computer, you’ll be happy to know your most precious
data is safe and sound.
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