We've all heard this before... friend had a drive failure (IDE).

[VirtualLarry]

Friend of mine finally called me tonight. His GF's IDE HDD evidently failed. Says it beeps on boot, and asks to insert a boot disk. Says it made funny grinding noises ealier, and the last four months, it's been running much slower than usual. Of course, me being his "techie" friend, this is the first that I heard of his GF's HDD problems.

This wouldn't be so bad, but she was storing a lot of pictures of their newborn baby on that HDD. My friend asked me about recovery, I told him thousands of $$$. He was like, "Oh?".

Maybe this will convince them to have backup procedures... but probably not.

I could have sold him a USB flash drive out of my collection, cheap. Too late now.

As much as I hate "the cloud", and losing control over my own PCs and their data - for users like my friend and his GF that run their HDDs until they die, (without a backup!), "the cloud" might be a better solution, since there is, in theory, a professional curating their data. Then again, they would probably forget the password to their cloud account.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I gave him a 16GB flash drive some time ago. No excuse for not having copies of those pictures on both PCs.

ProTip: Most Users are technically-challenged, and not pro-active. Then again, if they were, they wouldn't be calling me.

Edit: Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, I dunno. Anyways, I offered him a replacement HDD for free. Got a bunch of refurb IDE drives from Newegg a while back, that I no longer really need.

 

[Rebel44]

People are stupid - everyone is told million times to backup important data, but vast majority dont backup anything.

I have copy of important things on 2 PCs at home + offsite copy on HDD + cloud.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Sad. Might learn his lesson but data recovery is too expensive for average earners.

 

[CakeMonster]

I still keep fixing stuff for my friends, but the last couple of years I have been telling them that they need to backup and that I will not be responsible for it. It does take a bit of weight off my shoulders, and they have also seen and learned throughout these years that stuff fails. So do they have backups now? Not a single one of them as far as I know.

 

[PliotronX]

Before sending it in for lab recovery, I try the freezer trick and use a USB adapter (one of these should be in any self-respecting PC repairman's bag) to try to recover files. The freezer trick has been useful in coaxing drives to work for about twenty minutes. Now the tricky part is this might be the only shot you have at recovery so if there are particular files needed, best to get the paths beforehand because the head could violently crash and then the freezer trick won't even work leaving the lab recovery as the only option which ranges between $500-1200 I believe (one option and they only charge if successful which is unique).

 

[Charlie98]

Back in the Dark Ages (that is before I knew anything about computers) I was smart enough to at least buy an external drive and use it's included incremental backup utility (Seagate GoFlex.) Now that I have seen the Light, I've become a backup fiend.... running full backup images across 4 different drives. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak... I had to mount a backup image in October when my system drive failed. I hate to think about where I would be if I didn't have a comprehensive backup system in place.

For general users... if it requires a couple of keystrokes and clicks of a mouse... they won't do it. But they will shop on eBay or Amazon until 2AM... Ye reap what ye sow.

 

[PliotronX]

Back in the Dark Ages (that is before I knew anything about computers) I was smart enough to at least buy an external drive and use it's included incremental backup utility (Seagate GoFlex.) Now that I have seen the Light, I've become a backup fiend.... running full backup images across 4 different drives. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak... I had to mount a backup image in October when my system drive failed. I hate to think about where I would be if I didn't have a comprehensive backup system in place.

For general users... if it requires a couple of keystrokes and clicks of a mouse... they won't do it. But they will shop on eBay or Amazon until 2AM... Ye reap what ye sow.

In my mind it's okay because we get paid the big bucks for the knowledge on setting up backups and recovery It's sort of how most mechanics cars will run forever because they know their cars well.

 

[corkyg]

Stupid is an unkind generalization. Technically ignorant or challenged would fit the situation better, IMHO.

 

[Anteaus]

Stupid is an unkind generalization. Technically ignorant or challenged would fit the situation better, IMHO.

I don't know about that. Maybe 15 years ago you could play that card, but today maintaining a proper backup is as ubiquitous as changing your oil in your car.

Technically ignorant means that a person wasn't aware that hard drive failure was possible. Technically challenged means they understood the score but didn't know how to fix it. Blantant disregard to the continued warning from someone who knows better is straight up stupid. The stupidity is compounded when all the person had to do is literally copy files from one drive to another.

With the prices of external drive so cheap, there is no excuse for not backing up critical files.

 

[Elixer]

Lots of people still think that it will never happen to them.
Unless you have online backup, that is automatic, then I would say the vast majority don't do backups, or don't do them as frequently as they should.

 

[HeXen]

It has little to do with intelligence,we learn about fallibility as children. It's laziness and lack of forethought. Smart people are lazy too and I'm sure there is hypocrisy abound for all members here if we could break down everyone's lives.
Anyway, we are creatures of habit and everyone has some mix of good and bad habits and here the habit is just getting on the computer to satisfy the present desire and whims because manually doing anything else is not the current wanted desire. Why pay money for a service of auto backup hardware/software or manually do it yourself when you can just click on whatever it is you want to do first. It's the easiest path and that way of thinking gets to become a bad habit unless you retrain yourself to do otherwise.

 

[FalseChristian]

I got smart finally. I bought a Seagate 1TB USB 2.0 External desktop HD 4 years ago and it only lasted 2 years. I only lost 289GB of data and it was just movies and TV shows. I now have a 3TB Seagate External HD USB 3.0 with a 3-year warranty. I now backup all my data on DVD-RWs.

 

[jimhsu]

+1 to online backup and Crashplan (my favorite provider). 2TB backup drive died a few months ago (oddly it was one of the newer drives, but just past the warranty). Crashplan had no problem restoring nearly 1TB of data over the cloud in a week (also thanks to Comcast), and the only thing lost were redundant backups anyways (which I promptly recreated on a new drive). My external 250GB is also slowly dying (enjoying momentary glimpses of life), but as that has traveled around the world several times from below zero to 120 degree temperatures, dropped innumerable times, etc, that's kind of expected. Surprised it's lasted that long, even.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, good news. I talked with my friend again, and apparently, his GF also had copies of those pictures on her iPad. Crisis averted!

So I apologize for making my friend and his GF seem like technically-ignorant people. It sure sounded that way from my first conversation with him though, especially with him asking about data-recovery.

Hopefully, though, this thread can serve as an example to other storage users who might read it. BACKUPS ARE GOOD! ALWAYS HAVE BACKUPS!

 

[Morbus]

I have to say it did serve for something. Buy your friend a beer on me (lol) cause I've been computing for 10 years and have never had a proper backup plan set up.

Today that changes.

My Firefox profile (the most important thing, really) and a couple of other important things that I can't afford to loose will be receiving backup treatment daily. If anyone has any suggestions, I think this thread is as good a place as any, but I'll be doing my own research anyway.

I think the reason people don't backup their data is because they have gotten away with it for so long. In other words, people don't backup their data until they loose it, and then do start backing it up.

I never lost anything important, thankfully. Never had a HDD fail on me ever (I'm still using my 10yo 320GB Barracuda as a backup internal drive!!!). So I never felt the need. But that changes now, oh yes it does!

Thanks a lot Larry!

 

[Sunburn74]

Win7 system image automated weekly backup is all I need. Works well.

 

[RaistlinZ]

No its just lazy. They knew for four months. Their own fault.