Data Recovery Services Not just for businesses
It seems like now more than ever, we are seeing hard drives come in for data recovery, in which family photos are considered ‘critical data’. As a father myself I can certainly understand the value of that data. Pictures of your children or perhaps a late relative are exactly the type of data that really just cannot be recreated. A few years back it seemed that nearly every other telephone call was from a distraught parent who was told by their ‘computer guy’ that they had a hard drive crash, and that data recovery was the only solution.
Today most computer repair services advertise data recovery services which may or may not be a their ‘forte’ so to speak. (It’s not too terribly uncommon for a well meaning, but inexperienced computer technician to run data recovery software on a physically failing hard drive. This can have devastating effects and make recovery difficult, expensive and in some cases, impossible.
I distinctly remember someone telling me: “The first 5 years of my twins’ entire life are on that hard drive!!”
To the owner, this data could be basically considered priceless and is just another example of “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
Put yourself in this position…. For 2 years now you have been backing up all of your digital photos to your external back up hard drive from your digital camera. The kids’ birthdays, family get together and holidays maybe even pictures of Uncle Joe, who unfortunately is no longer with us, are all stored on that hard drive. These are ‘priceless’ memories.
Hard drives have been increasing in storage capacity, speed, ease of use, etc. etc. Basically almost everything has increased except the life span of the product unfortunately. It seems as if this may have actually decreased. It may be my jaded opinion, but somewhere along the line I believe the hard drive manufacturers realized that if they made products that would last 3-4 years on average, as opposed to say 10 years, they would be able to sell a whole lot more hard drives and manufacture them much, much cheaper.
Conventional hard drives have extremely sensitive, moving, mechanical pieces that can and do wear out over time. This is excluding Solid State Hard Drives. (Which come with their own set of benefits as well as risks.)
The absolute key factor here is to always have 2 copies of your critical data. There are many back up methods available. Online backup services, external hard drives, burning to DVD, or USB thumb drives are all great ways to avoid needing a data recovery service to recover what is (or was) already yours.
Examples like this prove that a data recovery services not just for businesses.
If possible, keep a copy of your important files on your laptop or desktop computer and a copy on your backup device. Not to sound ‘redundant’, (However redundancy is key here) but I often say: “Make a back up, and then make a backup of your backup.”
