That was a question that was recently put by forward on a TV consumer show.
One guy had his hard disk crashed and lost all his data, but he got the hard disk replaced because of the manufacturer’s warranty.
Then to retrieve the data he had it sent to a data recovery company to get it recovered. The price tag was about $ 1500.
He wanted that extra cost covered by the warranty.
I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it is quite clear that any warranties from hard disk manufacturers don’t include restoring data. That said, with the long life time and high durability of today’s hard disks they could very well afford this when it is caused by a hard drive breakdown.
As long as the hard disk only have a mechanical or electronic fault and it have not been exposed to water or fire the track record of restoring the data by a professional data recovery company is pretty good.
However, you have to expect to pay a chunk of money to have your data restored.
And you can never be 100 % sure they will succeed.
It’s always worthwhile to backup all your data or at least backup the data that is important to you.
This is the best warranty against data loss.
If you only use the computer for leisure, playing games or surfing the Internet then you may not need to take any backup at all.
But today, more and more people store important document and information on their computers. Some store data vital to their professional life. This can be years of work such as academic thesis or it can be the content for a new book they are writing.
But, most people store at least some important information such as address books, emails, text document, family pictures, music or bookkeeping data.
Should you take backup?
What type of backup is best for you?
This all depends on:
The value of the data if it becomes lost.
The time it will take to recreate lost data.
The cost to make the backup.
In most cases the data which needs to be backed up is limited to specific files or folders. If that is the case you don’t need to backup the whole hard drive and the cost to make the backup is reduced.
If you only need to backup documents, emails and address books then there are many cheaper alternatives including USB flash memory keys, online backup or backup to CD’s/DVD’s
If you install important software’s from the Internet then you need to take a full backup of the hard disk at least once. This is because nearly all software programs store system related information in what is called the reg keys deep in the operating system which must be backed up on a full backup.
As an alternative, make sure that you save the installation files and any accompanied software registration keys in one specific folder when you download the software.
If you do that and include this folder in your regular smaller backup then you are capable to recreate it.
If you want to minimize the downtime in case you get a hard disk crash and you don’t want the hassle to install the operating system and all the software’s you have on CD’s. If that is the case then you should consider making a disk image backup.
This is a backup of the complete disk drive.
Included in the disk image software is a boot utility from which you are able to boot from either a diskette or a CD.
Then, if you hard disk crashes you first install a new hard disk, next you boot up from your diskette or CD. From the boot program you are then able to the disk image directly to the hard disk. So by doing this restoration you don’t need to install the operating system and all you other programs from installation CD’s and you save time.
Per Strandberg manage an information site on data backup storage technologies!
Guide over providers of data recovery services.
Get information on how to restore crashed hard drives!
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
