Last week I spoke about backing up your data and how most people aren’t doing it. I’m returning to that because I feel it to be very important.
A couple of years ago Google published a report on hard drive failures that they had experienced. Google uses thousands of hard drives in their systems so they have a good idea as to how often they fail. Engadget did an article on it here (note, the article is approaching four years of age, but I feel the information is still useful). One of the details they selected was how the drive technology that’s supposed to warn you of failure often doesn’t. Basically, you can’t use can use any predictive or sensory technology to tell you something bad is going to happen. You need to be using some kind of insurance so that when something bad does occur, you have the ability to recover from the disaster.
There are many other details discussed in the original report. If you’re into a long, dry read, you can find the PDF by clicking here.
So, I emphasize again how important it is to be backing up your data. Your data are far more important than the rest of the computer and the cost of the “insurance” is far less than the cost of having a professional data recovery service extract it from the failed drive.