The Basics of Data Backup and Recovery

Dave had been writing his memoirs and a book about Babe Ruth, and a series of laptops had held his manuscripts for both books. All his drafts, research, voice notes, and interviews had migrated from computer to computer over the years, and whenever his laptop would start acting funny, he’d get another one and sell the old one. Expensive, he figured, but worth it for a bit of security.

All in all, he’d changed laptops four times-most recently because he wanted to watch DVDs on his frequent plane trips to New York-but each time, he would just burn all his work to a couple of CDs and put them on the newer computer. He’d never thought that a laptop would fail without giving him enough warning to sufficiently back everything up.

Sound familiar? If this is how you treat your data-and for most people, it is-keep reading.

On a flight, Dave opened up the ol’ computer to watch a little Die Hard and ignore the large sweaty man loudly snoring next to him. When he flipped open his laptop, however, he didn’t see the warm, comforting masculinity of Bruce Willis. Instead, he heard a loud clicking sound and a blue screen displayed. From that point, the computer simply wouldn’t start. There’d been no warnings, no slowdown, absolutely nothing. The computer was pretty much brand new, only a few months old.

Back home, he tried all the standard tech stuff; he hooked the drive into another computer, put it in an external enclosure, tried an array of various programs, but regardless, it just wouldn’t load. He’d heard that putting a drive in a freezer would sometimes work, but when he tried it, uh, not so much (the drive did, however, smell faintly of ice cream and deer sausage after that point, a troubling fact given that neither food was in his freezer).

No matter what he did, the hard drive was gone.

Some of his data was beyond reconstruction; for the biography of Ruth he’d recorded countless interviews with locals from the baseball giant’s old neighborhood, and some of his interviewees were now a little deep in the ground to go in for another round of questioning.

On top of that, he’d spent literally years working on his memoirs; rewriting the whole thing would take several more years, and it wouldn’t be the same. He called the computer manufacturer and the hard drive manufacturer. They both told him that this wasn’t something they covered, and they referred him to a list of four data recovery companies.

It’s one of the worst misconceptions to have in the computer age that data doesn’t need to be backed up, that it’s always just a support center call away. Unfortunately, drive problems can sometimes prove fatal for data, and all drives will eventually fail. Even the one in the computer I’m typing this on right now, and the one you’re reading this article with. Nothing lives forever in the world of hard drives.

Even top of the line drives from companies such as Seagate and Western Digital aren’t expected to have Energizer bunny-like longevity, and though some drives can live for more than a decade, this is rare and hard to predict. Most hard drive manufacturers rate drive life around 3-5 years.

Very commonly, when a drive fails, the heads that read the information come into physical contact with the platters that store the information; this is where the term “crash” comes from, it’s literally the two mechanisms “crashing” together. The heads can then scrape the surface of the platter, removing data and making it unrecoverable even to the best tech-nerds in the world.

Electronic problems can also afflict the controller boards of drives, and in a power surge, your drive can fry. The number of problems that a drive can experience is almost limitless; and professional data recovery companies spend millions of dollars every year researching ways to combat new issues with drives. Of course, not all situations are recoverable, and almost none of them are inexpensive.

The only failsafe solution is near-constant backup; investing in a drive like Maxtor’s OneTouch (designed specifically for pain-free backup) is a must. They run about two hundred bucks, but it’s a steal when you consider data recovery often can cost upwards of $2000-if it’s even successful. These drives come with software that backs your info up automatically, meaning you don’t have to remember to start the process every night. And trust me, you’ll put off backup if it isn’t automatic.

The OneTouch isn’t the only drive that has this ability, and this article shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement. That being said, some form of backup is absolutely essential. If you’re only worried about a few files (documents, maybe a video or two) you might consider using a USB thumb drive or just a few CDs. Whatever you choose, make sure you check it regularly to ensure there aren’t any problems when the data transfers. Also, always make sure you’ve got your data in more than one place-your backups are just as likely to fail as your original drive.

Well, failing that, let’s say your drive’s gone down. Stop crying. Put down the bottle. It’s not over.

Data recovery is pretty much the only solution for businesses with failed RAID array servers and single drives that haven’t been backed up. Unfortunately, the price is prohibitive; expect to spend around $1000 at the least expensive (yet still reputable) data recovery company. While expensive, the probability of recovery is high in most instances, with some companies reporting near a 90% rate.

It can be hard to pick the right company for this sort of thing, sort of like picking the right company for a car repair. You can pick the wrong group of people pretty easily.

The people I’ve talked to that have done this type of thing before (myself included) recommend looking at previous clients and asking if they use nondestructive methods-meaning, of course, that they won’t damage your drive any further while trying to fix it. Also, a reputable data recovery company will offer a free or low cost evaluation before starting work on a case. Some good companies I’ve referred people to are ESS Data Recovery and Drivesavers Data Recovery. Do your research, though; find out everything you can, and don’t be ashamed to go for the low price as long as a company has the right qualifications.
Alas, if there’s a lot of damage to the platters of a drive, the info could be gone forever, even to the efforts of professional data recovery companies. For Dave, this wasn’t the case; he got his data back the expensive way, and now he goes to the church of constant backups. In his spare time, he tries to convert nonbelievers.

In the end, backup avoids the frustration of data loss and heavy costs of data recovery. It’s cheap, easy, and you really have no excuse. Any techie in the world will tell you there’s never too little time to save your work; acting today can mean avoiding a big headache in the future, and it’s worth it to be able to kick back with a good Die Hard flick without worrying about where your files are going to be tomorrow.