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.