My Blog, Your Money

Several years ago, I experienced one of my worst nightmares.  No, my cat didn’t die.  (I don’t even have a pet.)  It was the very bane of my existence: hard drive failure.  I was devastated and on the verge of tears.  All the data I’d accumulated over 15 years was gone.  I felt like I’d lost my digital self.

Well, drastic times called for drastic measures.  I did some research and looked up DriveSavers.  I’d read about them before and heard of their successes recovering the data of authors and music artists.  Surely, they’d be able to help me out.  I called and arranged to bring my computer in early the next morning.

The next morning, I woke up at 6:00 am and drove all the way to Novato to drop off my ailing computer.  I don’t remember the specifics, but I somehow got the idea that the most I would have to pay was $1,000.  More on that later.  That’s definitely not what I would consider pocket change, but it seemed a reasonable price to pay for my precious data so I handed my computer over and entrusted the survival of my data to the professionals.

After several days, I got a phone call.  I was definitely anxious about what the outcome of the operation.  Success!  A huge wave of relief engulfed me.  Then just as quickly as that happened, I was told that the total came to $4,140 – a figure much higher than I was expecting.  My heart sank for the second time within a week.  I was too shocked to even question it.

Eventually, I was able to negotiate a lower fee, but it was still significantly more than the $1,000 I had been expecting.  The DriveSavers people justified the fee by saying that the recovery had been a complete success.

I couldn’t really argue with them there.  It was indeed a success.  I remember feeling a wave of satisfaction when I picked up my computer and they allowed me to verify on the spot that my all data had been recovered.  Truth be told, the price may have been high, but I would have been prepared to pay many multiples of the final total.

A very valuable lesson was also included in that price: back up any data you wouldn’t want to lose.  All hard drives will fail.  In fact, one of the hard drive ratings is known as MBTF – Mean Time Before Failures.

So ever since then, I’ve stocked up on backup drives as if they were candy.  To me, they’re investments.  They may have cost me a pretty penny, but buying those drives is much cheaper and (less stressful) than having to go back to Drivesavers.

I’m sharing my story to encourage you to learn from my ordeal and back up your important data regularly.  It’s gotten so easy nowadays.  Backup software has gotten better and more powerful.  Bigger, faster hard drives can be had now for pennies on the gigabyte.  Macs have Time Machine.  Even USB flash drives are getting in on the game with Sandisk offering a product that automatically backs up your data*.  Something I’ve been looking at recently is the selection of online services that have arisen.  There are a ton of them now including Mozy, Carbonite, IBackup, IDrive, and Box.net.  Mozy and IDrive both offer 2 GB of backup for free so if you don’t feel like spending any cash, you might as well back up your most important 2 GB.  If you want to back up more than that, Mozy and Carbonite both offer unlimited plans each a for low fee (~$50 a year).  That’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.

* Service free for the first 6 months.