GIJoeBob
Shared on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 23:14I am constantly amazed by the people that come into our shop, or even worse - our regular customers, that continue to throw caution to the wind and dont back up the important files on their computers.
People bring their computers in or we go to their office after receiving reports of nonsystem disk error messages and a quick check we confirm their fear. Yep, the hard drive has failed. "It happens unfortunately", we tell them. Just give us your backup drive or tapes and we will get you back up to speed in no time.
Backup? Umm....
This is when they start wringing their hands and wailing like an opera tenor "OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Please, GIJoeBob, rescue us from our folly!"
Sorry dude, youre screwed. No matter how much you cry, no matter how much you fume and sputter, no matter how much you threaten me and no matter how important you think you are, your data is gone. Your computer hard drive just barfed up a few gigs of data and the rest got crapped out the other end when it died.
Pay attention to this part: Here is one of many cold, hard facts about computers - you have either lost data or you will lose data. There is no way around it. It is inevitable. Hard drives fail all the time. Sometimes when they fail we can recover the data that is on the drive and other times we can not. But one thing is sure - your hard drive will fail at some point.
However, what is not so sure, is what you do after that hard drive fails.
You can tear your clothes and gnash your teeth and carry on like the Shah just died or you can give yourself a pat on the back because you backed up your data like a responsible user and you know you can get yourself back up and running with just a bit of work.
And here is my recommendation for a backup solution - an external hard drive. Maxtor, Western Digital and others make external USB and FireWire drives that come with backup software and are a snap to setup and use. Plus they are fast and reliable. Do you have very valuable data? Use two drives and use each one every other day.
So remember kids - backup, backup, backup - early and often.
People bring their computers in or we go to their office after receiving reports of nonsystem disk error messages and a quick check we confirm their fear. Yep, the hard drive has failed. "It happens unfortunately", we tell them. Just give us your backup drive or tapes and we will get you back up to speed in no time.
Backup? Umm....
This is when they start wringing their hands and wailing like an opera tenor "OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Please, GIJoeBob, rescue us from our folly!"
Sorry dude, youre screwed. No matter how much you cry, no matter how much you fume and sputter, no matter how much you threaten me and no matter how important you think you are, your data is gone. Your computer hard drive just barfed up a few gigs of data and the rest got crapped out the other end when it died.
Pay attention to this part: Here is one of many cold, hard facts about computers - you have either lost data or you will lose data. There is no way around it. It is inevitable. Hard drives fail all the time. Sometimes when they fail we can recover the data that is on the drive and other times we can not. But one thing is sure - your hard drive will fail at some point.
However, what is not so sure, is what you do after that hard drive fails.
You can tear your clothes and gnash your teeth and carry on like the Shah just died or you can give yourself a pat on the back because you backed up your data like a responsible user and you know you can get yourself back up and running with just a bit of work.
And here is my recommendation for a backup solution - an external hard drive. Maxtor, Western Digital and others make external USB and FireWire drives that come with backup software and are a snap to setup and use. Plus they are fast and reliable. Do you have very valuable data? Use two drives and use each one every other day.
So remember kids - backup, backup, backup - early and often.
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Comments
Submitted by Avril on Tue, 06/20/2006 - 23:57
Submitted by doodirock on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 02:33
Submitted by GIJoeBob on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 07:29
Submitted by biorod on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 07:59
Submitted by Fetal on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 08:31
Submitted by GIJoeBob on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 12:52
Submitted by GIJoeBob on Wed, 06/21/2006 - 18:59
Submitted by Barracuda on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 16:11
Submitted by BobLahblaw on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 17:24
Submitted by Gatsu on Sat, 06/24/2006 - 11:09
Submitted by GIJoeBob on Sat, 06/24/2006 - 14:28