Hard drive data recovery is a topic we often fail to consider until it’s too late. When your hard drive crashes, it takes your data with it. While data recovery services may be able to get your valuable data back from a crashed hard drive, they do so at a price. Once panic mode sets in you may need to pay whatever it takes to recover your data.

Of course, the panic can be avoided. All it takes is some planning and the commitment to follow a methodical backup schedule. Alas, many folks (myself included) fail to get with the program and when disaster strikes, we find ourselves at the mercy of the data recovery specialists.

But the question remains … if your hard drive crashes, what should you do?

Before sending your hard drive out to a data recovery specialist, check around with your buddies to see if they’ve had any experiences with specific firms. When you send your hard drive out, you are putting your data’s life in that firm’s hands. You want it to be someone you trust. No matter what, it will take time to evaluate your hard drive and recover the data. The data recovery specialist may or may not be able to save the day.

Since my last survey experiment went so well, I decided to create a new survey about data recovery. If you’ve had a data recovery experience (or even if you haven’t!), I hope that you will add to the collective Gnomie Knowledge Base by taking the survey. The survey should develop some interesting statistics about data recovery (including costs and success rates) as well as data backup habits.

Click here to take the data recovery survey

And there we get to the important part: data backup. That’s where the planning and commitment come into play. You need to have the forethought and fortitude to back up your most important data every single day, if at all possible.

Back in my old corporate days, system management was one of my primary responsibilities. I had to back up a Data General minicomputer each and every day. This old dinosaur of a typesetting front-end system used 50MB removable discs the size of an oversized birthday cake … the hard drive mechanisms were nearly the size of washing machines.

We backed up our data every day, because every so often a hard drive would go south … real south. With half a dozen typographers feeding data into the system, instant data recovery was paramount. By backing up each day, we knew that we could only lose a day’s worth of data, at worst. If the current day’s hard drive crashed, we’d swap out the mechanism and swap in yesterday’s disc.

In sitting down to write (and rewrite!) this article, I’ve had to consider how far away I’ve come from those roots. More than that, how lax I’ve become. I know I need to become more vigilant about my backups, to not take things for granted … because hard drives do crash, and we do often fail to think about that until it’s too late.

Have you backed up your data today? :)