The Computer Shed

Febuary 2009

Hard drives are everywhere. Every desktop, laptop, and server computer in your company. Likely your phone system, point-of-sale system, automation control system, and even your security system all contain hard drives. Add personal electronic devices into the mix such as DVR's, iPods, camcorders, game systems, etc., and you start to get the idea that hard drives are as common as light bulbs.

The comparison with light bulbs goes deeper: we all know that light bulbs fail eventually. It's not a matter of if they will fail, but simply a matter of when! And, we all know that when a light bulb fails, we replace it with a new one -- there's no reasonable repair option. The same is true for all those hard drives that keep your business going: it's not a question of if they will fail, but when they will fail. And when they fail, you replace them -- there are few repair options.

The difference is that light bulbs don't contain your essential business or personal data! A single hard drive, however, can easily contain hundreds of gigabytes of data that are absolutly critical to the operation of your business! Ask yourself one simple question: can you afford to lose the data contained on any of the hard drives in your company?

The solution to this delima is simple: BACKUPS!

In February 2007 Gooogle released the results of a study they had conducted on their own hard drives. Among some of their findings are that hard drives of any age can fail. For example, 6 percent of drives less than one year old fail. Once a hard drive reaches its 2nd birthday, the failure rate starts to go up significantly.

There are a number of factors in addition to age that affect the life span of hard drives. One is extremely high temperatures and another is unusually cold termperatures.

Most modern hard drives have a built-in technology called SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) than can provide some information about the health of a drive. However, it is by no means 100% accurate. The Google study found that up to 30% of hard drives showing SMART errors eventually failed. I wouldn't bank my company on a 30% success rate!

The short summary is this: hard drives will fail, and you can't predict when. Therefore, you absoutly must make regular backups of your important data.

There are many, many methods and techniques for making backups. Which one is best for you will depend upon many factors. I will be covering some generic options in future articls. However, if you don't currently have a backup strategy and you're not sure how to implement one, then you need to get help immediately! (Don't wait for my upcomming articles) If you need help with this, call your favorite computer professional today because tomorrow might be too late!

If it's already too late and you're kicking yourself because one of your computers wouldn't boot up this morning, then The Computer Shed does offer a wide variety of data recovery options. Not only do we have forensic-grade hardware and software to attempt recovery and analysis of your data, but we have partnered with one of the best "clean room" technology companies in the business. However, I can tell you this: backups are a lot cheaper!

One final thought: assume your backups don't even exist until you've tested them! Do you KNOW that those tapes have any readable data on them? Are you SURE you can restore to a different computer? When you NEED your backup is NOT the time to find out that you picked the wrong combination of settings in your backup software and what it's been putting on tape all these years is totally unusable!

So, if it's not too late, make a backup today. If it is too late, call us and we'll investigate all available options. Don't be one of the businesses that learns the backup lesson the hard way!

Next time: Disaster Recovery

-Farren