The vast majority of people have never encountered hard disk failure because they may only have experience of three or four hard disks in their lifetime and they have all lasted as long as the Computer. However, as soon as you introduce the law of large numbers you find that hard disk failure is more common than you would imagine and it doesn't just occur on 10 year old machines, I have seen it happen in the first couple of months with brand new machines. I tend to receive one or two calls a week from somebody whose hard disk has failed and when the reality dawns on them the next line is usually "what ever you do to fix the problem I must have all my data back". Unfortunately this isn't really the ideal time to pass the responsibility for your data over to me.
In over 90% of cases I do manage to save the data on a failed disk but it is by no means guaranteed and if it has to go to a specialist data recovery company they will charge £500 or £1000 if it's an SSD. Even then recovery isn't guaranteed and I've had several SSD's where even with £1,000 on the table they have recovered nothing.
You must think ahead and if it is vital that you don't lose something then back it up. A single location on a Computer isn't a safe place for critical data. Documents, spreadsheets and photographs should always reside in at least two places unless you are happy to lose them. A number of events including Hard Disk failure, Fire, Theft of Computer, Virus attack or Ransomware attack could result in your data and memories being lost forever.
The most common places to backup to are an external drive or cloud storage like Dropbox. The advantage of cloud storage is that the files are available from any Computer in any location. This helps keep you connected to your files while you are on the move.
There are some important things to consider even after you have a successful backup. Never leave your external drive permanently connected to your PC. If you do and suffer a ransomware attack then the files on your backup drive will be encrypted too and you then have no backup. In the event of fire or theft you will also lose everything as the drive will be burnt or stolen. The easiest solution is to store it elsewhere in the house but in an ideal world it will be off-site or at another address to cover the fire situation.
Please also remember that if you are connected to your cloud storage at the time of a ransomware attack your cloud files will also be encrypted and you will again have no backup.
You may like to consider our disk cloning service which although it only gives you a point in time backup does mean that you can just install the drive and away you go with your Operating system, programs and data as they were after a ransomware attack. Prices start from £29.99 after you have purchased the drive.
Churchdown Computers can also help you create a backup job that you can either run manually or run via a schedule please call Mark on 07557 483438, e-mail mark@churchdowncomputers.co.uk or fill out the form at the bottom of the Contact page if you are interested in this service.
