A client came to the shop one day with his computer and told me that his computer would not start.  The power light would go on, but nothing else happens.  After a quick analysis, I told my client that the hard drive on his computer had crashed, and that it will need to be replaced. Shocked at my findings he then asked me if I can recover any of his baby’s photos from the hard drive. My efforts weren't successful, so I gave him another option.  I told him that I could send his hard drive to a data recovery specialist to see if there is anything they could do.  However, just to look at the drive will cost about a hundred dollars.  If any data is recoverable, then the recovery cost can start at around $500. He thought about it over night, and called me the next day, to tell me that his limited income, he can't afford to chance it.  So all those photos of his 3 year old son are forever gone. Can this happen to you?

If all of your photos, financial data, or other vital piece of information resides on your computer only and if there is no data recovery plan in place, then the answer is yes this can happen to you.  It is not a matter of “will my hard drive fail” but a matter of “when”.    Don't get me wrong, a  computer's hard drive is very reliable, with Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) ratings of millions hours.  But things do happen that can destroy the data on your computer. Without a recovery strategy in place, when the drive fails, everything on your computer will be gone.  And the cost of potential recovery can be outside of your means.

To minimize this risk, you should have a recovery strategy in place.  Much like the way you have a house evacuation plan in case of fire.  Here are some strategies that can be used.

Keep the original:  This applies more to photos from a camera's memory card.  Periodically copy the pictures from your camera's memory card to your computer.  BUT do not delete the files from the memory card. These memory cards now days can store thousands of photos, and like anything else in life, it can fail.  Imagine one day you get a message on camera that the media cannot be read. If you periodically save the files to your computer, the number of photos lost will be minimized.  If you do not copy the files periodically to your computer, when this happens all photos on the card are gone.

Now, when the memory card is full, do not delete the files on he memory card. Instead keep the card in a safe place, and get a new memory card for the camera.  What this does is create a second copy of those precious photos. If one media fails, you'll still have the other media on hand.

Duplicate the data:  All of your computer files (photos, documents, etc) should be stored in a folder called "Myd Documents".  Periodically copy the contents of the "My Documents" folder to an external hard drive.  That way you always have two sets of your data files.  You can purchase an external hard drive from your local computer dealer or online from vendors like Tiger Direct.

The trick here is to remember to copy those files to the external drive periodically.  If you don't want to do this manually there are simple backup software that can be used to automate this process.  A lot of times, hard drive vendors will include a simple backup software with the hard drive, if it doesn't, you might want to consider Norton 360 to help you do those backups.

Backup the entire computer: Duplicating the data only saves your photos, files and other documents from a potential hard drive crash.  What it doesn't do is provide a restore point to return your computer to should you experience a hard drive failure.  By backing up the entire computer, you will be able to restore the computer to the state it was in on the last backup.

To do a full system backup, you will still use an external hard drive, but it has to be at least two times the size of your current hard drive.  That way you can maintain at least two genearations of backups on your computer.  As far as software, I would recommend either Norton Ghost or Norton Save and Restore.  Both of these solutions creates a point in time image of your hard drive.

If there are multiple computers to backup, set up a network storage device to store the backups on and install the backup software on each computer.  Again, make sure your storage device has at lease two times the capacity of all the hard drives to be backed up.

Don’t wait until your computer crashes before you start thinking of implementing a backup strategy. When trouble strikes, it will be to late.  So do it now.

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