Hard drives fail, they get stolen, they get broken. When you least expect it. Even if you are prepared. And what you are left with is a gut wrenching make you want to throw up what did I lose and will never get back feeling.

It happened to me yesterday. And it was awful timing, if there is such a thing as good timing for these things. Recently we rebuilt my dinosaur of a computer and the hard drive we bought was DOA, it would not format. I finally got around to sending it in and the replacement arrived Tuesday. My husband (in house IT ) installed it that night and I was going to spend Wednesday transferring files onto it so my External Hard Drive could go back to being the back up. As I went to move files, a horrible thing happened-nothing. It froze, it crashed. I tried again-it tried to transfer but the same thing happened.

I have an on-line back up so I checked there to see if everything was backed up before the crash. Everything up until November 18th, about the time I thought I noticed it act funny but then it seemed fine. Luckily those items are mostly not important although I don’t remember what all I lost so I could be wrong. Also luckily, my external hard drive is under warranty and will be sent back asap, hopefully all I have to pay is the shipping cost and will receive a new one, but everything on there is pretty much lost.

I thought I was prepared, but I was wrong. I’m lucky that after listening to other horror stories of hard drives crashing that I invested in an online back-up but I still failed. I never bothered to make physical backups on CD/DVD just in case-what if that had failed too? I will be spending a lot of time downloading all my files and burning CDs before I send the drive back just in case I need to try to have someone recover files.

So this is my PSA-Backup all your files! In at least two (2) locations (one on-site and one off-site). It doesn’t matter whether it’s just your personal pictures, resume, school work, tax returns, etc or you are a business person with client information as well. You can lose them all in an instant. What if the unthinkable happened and your computer is stolen? What if even worse happens and your house burns down? You won’t get those files back. You can’t recreate those memories or all the hours that went into creating whatever was on there. Can you imagine losing the first pictures of your babies? Or the thesis you’ve been working on for months? You NEED to have an off-site backup as well. Exchange CDs with a friend-you keep theirs and they keep yours. Get a safety deposit box. A fire-proof safe may not be temperature resistant enough for electronic devices and optical storage (CD/DVD, thumb drives, etc). Online storage is a great option as well. Most will backup your data as often as you like-continuously, daily, when your computer is idle, etc. If your hard drive fails you sign in to your account and either download everything you need or for a fee they can send it to you. There are several companies out there that provide a great service, just do your research. I won’t publicly announce who I use just in case some meanie out there wanted to try to do something bad to my backup.

No matter what you choose, do your research to decide what best fits your needs and please backup your data in two (2) places!

Here are a few articles about the subject:
What hard drive/disk failure is
Rate of failure
Signs of immenent failure

And a photo I would be devastated to lose

This is my oldest as a baby, 3 weeks old. The photo I took that inspired me to start this journey.