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You've probably heard the old clich: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This couldn't be a more accurate statement when it comes to backing up
Spend a Little Time Now -- Save a lot of Money Later.
In this computerized digital age, making backups of your critical data has become a crucial necessity. You've probably heard the old clich: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This couldn't be a more accurate statement when it comes to backing up, and saving your valuable data.
The rise of today's current high capacity hard disk drives makes it a little easier and more convenient to actually not back up. After all, who hasn't said: "I have it saved to my hard drive?" "Right?" Yes, your data is stored on the hard disk drive; however the hard drive is a working piece of mechanical machinery, with rapidly moving delicate magnetic parts that will eventually fail.
When your hard drive fails will you be prepared?
It's not a matter of "If the drive fails", but more so "When the drive fails." A lot of people aren't.
Drive failures, can and usually happen at the most inopportune times. It's basically "Murphy's Law." Taking the relatively small amount of time, and resources to make a backup of your critical data can save you and perhaps even your company potentially thousands of dollars in disaster recovery costs, loss of revenue, downtime, etc.
Is your QuickBooks or accounting file or your E-mail archive with all of your business contacts any less important than your personal checkbook, or personal address book? "Of course it isn't!" What about the time, energy, effort and talent used to create those flashy websites? Or perhaps the next best selling novel that you have been writing for over a year now? What about all the inventory databases? Having copies of this information is a must. This is why it is extremely important to have backups/copies of this data.
Data is simply Digital Information. Once this information is "lost" or inaccessible due to a hard drive hardware mechanical failure you quickly realize the value of that information.
There are many solutions/preventative measures that equal the "Ounce of Prevention" clich. Make Backups. Then verify the contents of your Backups, and Make Backups of your Backups.
There are numerous utilities on the web to help simplify this, and in some cases even automate this procedure for those of us who are not so diligent at backing up. If however you do find yourself in a quandary with a failed hard drive. Do not panic. Here are some tips:
1. *Any* sounds emitting from your drive is not a good sign. Power down immediately.
2. Do NOT run scandisk, CHKDSK or any ther disk checking utilities, as this could make matters seriously worse.
3. Avoid powering the computer on and off. The clicking sound from your hard drive that you may be hearing, could lead to a grinding sound. Far less optimistic for successful recovery.
4. NEVER, EVER listen to a computer "Guru" friend who says: "I can fix it!" Hard drives are delicate mechanical storage devices, and the inner workings and mechanics should always be left to a trained, experienced data recovery engineer.
The hard drive is one of the few components of a computer that actually has moving, mechanical parts. (Keep your wild eyed friend with the Phillips head screwdriver in his or her hand away from your sick hard drive.) If you do happen to find yourself with this type of unfortunate situation, ECO Data Recovery has been recovering critical data since 1987. Their highly skilled engineers have the ability, the "know how" and the proper techniques to get you and/or your business back on the speedy road to recovery.
author = Brian Cain
url = http://www.ecodatarecovery.com/
dept = Disk, Files: copy, archive, rescue, backup
audience = General: cross platform anyone
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