The Phone Call
I was working at a client’s office today, taking care of several I.T. related issues that only us nerds find interesting. Around 2pm, my cell phone rang – it was Wayne, another one of my clients.
Wayne only calls me when he either wants to talk about airplanes or if something is wrong.
Today was not an airplane day.
Wayne wanted to know if the clicking noise coming from the hard drive and the “disk not found” error message on the screen meant that his data was gone. I told him most likely, unless he was willing to pay a data recovery company to physically recover the data.
I could tell from the silence that he had hoped I would have better news. He then told me that ALL of his pictures of his daughter were on that drive – from birth up to 7 years. He had emailed many of them out over the years, but had never backed them up.
I wish Wayne’s story was rare and unique, but it’s not. In the last few months, I’ve personally come across several incidents where backing up the data would have prevented a very painful experience. One was a church that even had a tape backup system in place that wasn’t even being used.
A friend of mine recently consulted a small business that nearly lost the ability to run their business because of a computer issue. A single computer, not backed up at all, was used in the day to day operations of the business.
Backing Up Is(n’t) Hard To Do
Backing up your data in the 21st century is easier than ever. Here is a short summary of options suitable for non-computer geeks:
- One-Touch Backup External Drive – this is an external hard drive that connects to your computer via USB or Firewire and along with some software, backs up your data with the touch of a button on the device.
- Online Backup – with the wide availability of high-speed (Broadband) internet, dozens of companies are now offering free or inexpensive online storage. With some you can even configure the backups to happen automatically.
- Burning CDs / DVDs – if your computer has a CD or DVD burner installed (and most sold in the last few years do), you can periodically burn your data to a disc (and store them in a fireproof safe).
Pay Now or Pay More Later
Wayne called around to see how much a data recovery would cost – the price ranged significantly from around $450 to $2500. With any of these, there is no guarantee the data will actually be recovered. If you went with a mid-price range service (I’m not sure I’d go with the lowest…), you’d still be paying many times the cost of the above options.
With more and more of our lives and businesses being digitized, we run the risk of having a devastating loss than can be totally avoidable.
Now, go forth and back up thy data.
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