When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore. But when your hard drive bites the dust, like a gnawed up piece of crust, now that’s a sad story, baby. Of course, we all know that losing data to a hard drive crash is a preventable (and sometimes recoverable) disaster. In our first data recovery survey, over a hundred Gnomies stepped up to share their (sometimes not) sad stories of data recovery…

Three quarters of the respondents had lost data to a hard drive crash. But only half of the respondents had their data backed up. “Be Prepared” is the Boy Scouts motto. But take heed. Proper backup is the best way to keep your data afloat, should your drive end up in Davey Jones’ locker.

CD-ROM appears to be the gnomeosphere’s most popular method to back up data, with two thirds of the respondents opting for the shiny silver platters. Just over half of those surveyed backed up to a second hard drive. Bernoullis and Syquests may be fading memories, but roughly one in five still back up to some form of removable media.

Of those folks who used data recovery services, the pie was nearly split into equal thirds. One third had no luck in getting their data back whatsoever. Most folks were at least partially successful.

[Data Recovery Survey Results, continued]