[...] are very important – as Harry and Melissa have shown us this year.  (Sorry guys, I’m not picking on you, honest!)  And if [...]

[...] moral of the story is that if you don’t want to lose things anymore (barring a computer failure, which can be countered by a good backup strategy), you could be just like the smart [...]

[...] same day I posted “When You Lose a Different Kind of Everything”, I received an email straight from Geek Squad City. Mike Hans, Deputy Director of Counter [...]

Online backup fulfills both these requirements, and in my opinion it is all the backup you need.

Thanks again. Great comment.

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.

the Wandering Author’s last blog post..City

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 included a link to Ontrack for their Canadian customers. Customers in the US can access their site at http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/ .

Mark

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