15
When You Lose a Different Kind of Everything
Most people today rely on our computers, whether for business, pleasure or personal use. We store family pictures, documents and dream projects. Increasingly, our computers are our lives.
What happens when your computer fails – and you lose everything? I’ll tell you, because this situation recently happened to me.
When my PC tower went on the blink last year after seven years of use, I thought I was smart to have foresight. I bought an external hard drive as my backup plan.
The external drive was perfect. It had 400 GB of space and I could install programs on it. It was portable, and if my tower died for good, I could easily plug the external drive into the laptop. Life would go on without missing a beat.
I never expected the external drive to die within a year.
Now What?
Last week, I tried to access my external drive, and it just wasn’t there. Talk about feeling as if your house had burnt down.
The external drive held numerous client files, several folders’ worth of notes on our novel, pictures of my cats when they were kittens (not even James dared to laugh at this loss). I couldn’t access our iStock images and various other files in my image library. Many of those files were not easily replaced.
Contact the Manufacturer
Contacting the manufacturer to see if they can help is always the best course of action – why not go straight to the source to get the information you need? In most cases, manufacturers have sites where you can submit help tickets or at the very least get a phone number to call for help.
When my laptop lost its power source three weeks ago (no, this hasn’t been Harry’s month for electronics), Gateway was right there with the support I needed via a live chat found right on the site. They took my order for the part I needed and shipped it off.
I expected the same level of support from my external hard drive manufacturer, but no such luck. Their site was difficult to navigate, and I had to jump through sign-up hoops just to leave a help ticket.
I still haven’t heard back from them. Thanks for nothing, Acomdata.
Calling In the Troops
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Geek Squad rocks. When there’s a problem with my computer, the Geek Squad is right there for me each and every time.
They were there, yes, but I can’t say that they’ve managed to recover my files yet. They attempted to access the external drive in house, knew the disc was spinning, but couldn’t get the drive to show up on their computers.
I discovered that the Geek Squad could send the external drive out to a data recovery service at their headquarters. Sometimes it pays to ask questions.
The good thing is that in-house analysis costs $150, but if the Geek Squad can’t solve the problem, they’ll refund half the money. If you do send your drive out for in-depth data recovery, it’s only a $60 deposit. They call with an estimate after they’ve had a look before they do any further work.
What’s Your Backup Plan?
Face it; no one is immune to a hard drive crash. It’s like that old biker saying: “There are two types of riders; those who have dumped their bikes and those still waiting to dump their bikes.”
Eventually, you will face a hard drive failure. You can never fully save all the files you own or protect each file from elimination no matter what you do. But there are steps you can take to have a solid backup plan to salvage what you can.
Email: If you have Gmail (and you should), you have plenty of space to store correspondence, notes and files. Email the important stuff to yourself and archive it. A quick search retrieves the file from online storage.When I send clients their final designs, I send all the pertinent files. These files include theme images and CSS as well as any Photoshop files I used to create images for that particular project.
I have a folder set up in my Gmail for each client, and I can go back through those folders to salvage missing files.
cPanel: Many of the files I had were for website designs. They had already been uploaded to our host server or to the host servers of clients to whom I am webmaster.Poking around in these cPanels, I was able to restore much of what was lost.
Seagate Free Agent: The Seagate Free Agent has 500 GB of space and allows you to program backups of specified files and folders, even to online storage sites. It runs continually in the background and stays up to date.
So far, my new Seagate drive seems to be working well. My computer runs slower when I use graphics programs and another program is running in the background, but the SFA adjusts to give certain programs priority.
This particular external hard drive also comes with a built-in fan and automatically shuts off when the computer goes into Sleep mode. The drive also goes to Sleep mode when there’s nothing new to back up. My old Acomdata ran continuously and had no cooling system.
The SFA also comes with a free 6-month trial subscription to their online storage service. Oh, and it looks slick – it’s black with amber lights. (Yeah, call me a sucker for packaging and design).
Installation is easy, with the install programs on the drive itself for plug-and-play use. I even made a copy of the install files and saved them on two other drives in case the Seagate decided to act like my old drive and deny me access.
Online Storage Sites: We’re looking into online storage services, specifically Mozy and iBackup. When subscribing to an online storage site, it’s important to make sure the site is a reputable one. You don’t want to save your valuable files to some schmoe site that looks good and then be left empty handed when they go bankrupt or shut down.
iBackup doesn’t look as slick as Mozy, but it has better reviews, notably a very strong one from PC World Magazine that pitted iBackup and Mozy against each other. iBackup also had live chat for instant support, and James tested it with a question to see whether the technicians knew their stuff. They did.
Mozy has a site that looks more professional, but there was no live chat and James had to email Mozy for some information missing on their site. It took four days to get a reply. That immediately tells us that despite the good looks, Mozy may not have our backs when we need them. The upside is that Mozy may be cheaper – but cheaper doesn’t always mean better.
SaaS: Sofware as a service is hot these days, and many businesses now offer hosted versions of popular programs so that you never lose your work. All your data is stored on safe, protected servers. Hint: Gmail is SaaS, and it rocks for retrieval, so why not check out what other online versions of your favorite programs are available?
Burn, baby, burn!: Get thee a DVD burner! They’re cheap and easy to use. Go through files regularly and back up your data to DVDs. Why DVDs? Well, a DVD can store far more data and files than a CD. You can burn and store the DVD out of sight and mind for about $2 total and 15 minutes of time. A regular DVD burn of your files makes sure you’re always covered.
The good part of all this electronic mess? We haven’t skipped a beat, and we haven’t lost anything that is job related. (The kitten pictures may prove a different story). In fact, had I not written on the experience, our readers would most likely would never have known about this technical difficulty.
Make backing up your data a priority. Don’t rely on thinking, “That’ll never happen to me!” or believing you’re protected. You’re not, it can and it will.
Note: I wrote this post last week. You can imagine how unsettling it was to find out that Melissa Donovan had written on an almost identical situation a few days prior to this post’s publication. It just goes to show that losing everything is more common than we realize.
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@Wendi “You have an Aries hiding somewhere in your chart?? Start ‘em and leave ‘em”
That’s an Aries thing?? I’ve been excused by the stars, woot!!
Nicole Brunet’s last blog post..What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
@Wendi: No Aries in the chart, but I am a Sagittarian and that’s still a Fire sign. Cancer also figures prominently in my chart, so if I’m not skittering sideways around a project, I’m analyzing both sides of pros and cons to death and never get anywhere.
Harry, I’m so sorry to hear about this!
I use Gmail to send myself documents, upload my pictures to flickr, and back-up everything to either Amazon S3 or our own servers or both.
Oh, and I also have an external hard drive.
I think my system is in pretty good shape, now the only other thing I have to do is actually remember to back everything up.
Thanks for the reminder… I’ll go do that now.
Allison’s last blog post..Bulgogi Roll
I can’t imagine losing precious data. From losing blog entries and ideas, to a novel you’ve been working on for years… It’s unthinkable.
Bamboo Forest’s last blog post..Flying LlamaFish’s 7 Fun Words
On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage …
Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC’s will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.
Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.
Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
I feel faint… I’ve been placing waaaaay too much trust in my external hard drive. Downright smug about it. Thanks for offering some viable solutions, like email storage.
Sara at On Simplicity’s last blog post..Dreaming Big in a Small Town
Important advice from James and co. Lessons I’ve learned:
* Backup regularly from PC to external drive. I use SyncToy, which comes with Windows.
* Use Gmail. I still have a local email client (Thunderbird), but I’ve added Gmail to it as an IMAP app and easily move emails into it (just like you would move email from one folder to another).
* Find an online backup system. I’ve tried several and they were awful. 400 to look through per Jennifer’s recommendation… ay yi yi.
Meryl K. Evans’s last blog post..Business Client Gift Ideas
Harry,
Sorry to hear of your data loss. I have been fortunate to not experience such a loss but I have some experience/success with other people’s computers. Over ten years ago a local ski resort owner lost access to his hard drive. I examined his system and their was nothing I could do to access the files on his hard drive. It turned out the hardware inside the hard drive was malfunctioning and was unable to access the data on the discs. No software could retrieve the data. There are basically two types of failures – the hard drive spins and the arms, motors, etc. are able to accept commands from software such as SpinRite to access files on the disc or the hard drive does not respond to the special emergency software. If the hard drive can not be accessed, it can be sent out to the experts whom I consider to be Kroll Ontrack (20 years in the business) – http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.ca/ . They have the equipment and expertise to dismantle the hard drive and extract the data from the individual discs on special equipment if it’s possible (there are cases where they can’t retrieve the data even in this manner). Also worth mentioning is software available that can monitor the health of your hard drive through it’s built in SMART firmware. One software I found to be fairly comprehensive is HD Inspector (Windows program) – http://www.altrixsoft.com/en/hddinsp/ . The Ontrack service is worth looking at but the price tag may be a bit steep. Good luck.
Mark
Harry,
I included a link to Ontrack for their Canadian customers. Customers in the US can access their site at http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/ .
Mark
I had an external drive crash on me last year. I know the sinking feeling you get when you find our your drive is dead and you dont have a copy of the data anywhere else.
Since then I have been using ElephantDrive (www.elephantdrive.com). Very happy with the service. Unlimited storage – I have over 300 G stored there now. Very helpful tech support. And it was the fastest from the different services that I tried.
My day job is with a company that has data recovery software for the Mac and we here this kind of thing all the time. The biggest reason you lose data is because a hard drive fails. This could be a software/OS problem, which means software can fix it like ours does. Or it could be hardware problem and software might be able to get some of it back or nothing.
Apple has the right idea with Time Machine, make it simple and people don’t have to think about it. I just bought a Time Capsule for my home network and set all our computers to use it. Of course it isn’t near big enough for my pictures and video. I’m not sure there is a drive big enough to backup original video files. That’s one reason to love tape.
A tip on buying drives. The biggest killer of hard drives is heat. Only by external drives that have a fan, or at least a heat sink. The only drives I’d recommend are from G-Tech. They are what I have.
Ron’s last blog post..01 Vlog: Tony Robbins Giveaway Announcement
I’ve been a professional genealogist, and I’ve done a lot of background research for a book on emergency preparedness. I’ve read the standards various national archives use, and I’ve tried some things myself, including some of your ideas. You have the right general idea, but you’ve got a few things wrong.
No data recovery service can guarantee to recover every file – but when your data means more than money to you, contact CONVAR Data Recovery, even though they’re in Europe. I have no connection with them, but look at their record, then search their web site for rough pricing guidelines. Not that much more than the Geek Squad. Enough said. If I ever lose any of my kitten pictures, pictures of my beloved cat who died of kidney failure 6 years ago, or any of my manuscripts – these are the guys I’m contacting, unless I just don’t have the cash.
Second, do not trust optical discs for backups! I studied all the factors that could lead to damage in optical discs. I thought I had a great system set up – including printing a date on the jewel case label to remind me to burn a new copy before the old one could fail. I shut off most of the lights in my office when handling discs, to reduce UV exposure. You get the idea… So I moved all my paper files onto optical discs – and lost the lot, beyond recovery, when the discs went completely bad unexpectedly. Rewritable discs are just as unreliable, for different technical reasons. CDs and DVDs you burn yourself (which use a different technology than commercially reproduced ones) just are not suitable for preserving files.
Solid state hard drives are the most stable currently know method of storing data. Get USB sticks, or larger portable solid state drives. Keep one set of data at home, and store another in a safe deposit box. For 125 GB of data, two solid state drives will cost an awful lot – but the price is dropping. In the meantime, keep one solid state drive in a safe deposit box with the bulk of your files, and a USB stick you switch back and forth weekly or so with altered files on it. Then, you could rely somewhat on optical discs, since you do have a fallback. Keep a set of optical discs at home, but burn new copies of this set at least every six months, do not affix sticky labels, and do not expose them to water, moisture, high humidity, direct sunlight, heat over 75 F or chemical fumes of any variety. As soon as the price falls far enough, get a second solid state drive instead. If you can afford it, get a third drive, and store that one with a relative or friend – or in a distant bank’s safe deposit vault – at least two hundred miles away. Use USB keys to build up incremental backups that can be added to the third whenever possible.
Never trust online backup services too far. There are too many factors that need to be considered (a staffer at the LDS Family History Library wrote a paper on this, covering only some of the issues, and no company would answer all her questions…). Yes, for a small number of files you may alter often, as an extra backup, they may be OK (and Mozy is not too bad – you might wait a short while, but they are as reliable as anyone else) – but don’t use them as part of your regular backup.
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@ Wandering – I appreciate the time and effort that went into that post. Thank you for the clear warnings and suggestions for a proper method. Considering your experience preserving history, it kind of makes one sit up and take notice.
Thanks again. Great comment.
As far as I’m concerned, the two most important factors for a backup are that it should be automatic, and that it should be off-site. If it isn’t automatic, then the chances are that it won’t happen at all. And if it isn’t off-site, then you’re just asking to have your backup trashed by the same event that trashes your original; be it a fire, flood, lightning strike, virus, burglary or whatever.
Online backup fulfills both these requirements, and in my opinion it is all the backup you need.