Hard Drives are Mysterious
Hard drives are the most delicate parts of your computer, and also the most mysterious when it comes to lifespan. This goes for PCs and Macs, as well as both laptops and desktops. I’ve dealt with hard drives that functioned for 10 years without failing, but also ones that failed within a couple of weeks.
What happens when they fail?
Hard drives don’t all fail the same way—sometimes you can still recover files from a failed hard drive, while other times you’ll have to take it to a data recovery specialist. The most important thing you should know is that files can’t always be recovered from failed drives and that’s why it’s essential to backup regularly.
You Could Risk Losing Everything
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, chances are, you probably have important information on your computer. It could be pictures, school files or even documents for your business. Once your hard drive fails, you could potentially lose everything. That’s considering you don’t have your files already backed up somewhere.
I’ve heard many sad hard drive failure stories from customers I serviced as a computer technician. Some of the stories include:
- A lawyer losing 10 years worth of client files
- A customer losing all the pictures of his dad that passed away
- A customer losing all the baby photos of her toddler
- A woman who lost her entire business because her data was on the drive
While these are only a percentage of the stories I’ve heard, all of them could have been prevented with a simple hard drive backup.
Why Backup Regularly Though?
You want to always have a recent copy of your files backed up. Why? It’s pretty obvious if you think about it. Let’s say you backup your files once a month, your hard drive one day fails, and it’s deemed unrecoverable. Do you really want to lose a month’s worth of files?
Performing a backup regularly allows you to minimize the amount of loss you’ll receive in the case of an unrecoverable drive. You really should be getting into the habit of backing up important files immediately after creating them.
On another note, all computers can get infected with viruses. Some viruses can cause irreparable damage to your files too. With the latest spread of the WannaCry encryption virus—which encrypts all of your files and asks for ransom, it’s best to have your files backed up in a safe place.
My Final Thoughts
Since all of us store important files on our hard drives, it’s important for us to take precautionary measures to ensure our files are always safe. Hard drives really are mysterious devices and I know better than to not back up my own files after seeing hundreds of hard drives fail at work.
Don’t take chances with your data. Don’t tell yourself you’ll do it later. Backup your files regularly.
In the case that you do forget to backup some of your files and want to try recovering them yourself, here is an article for the top 15 best data recovery software of 2017.
