Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
After experiencing another hard drive failure, I realize why you should be scared, and want to share yet more reasons that backups are so critical.
This article's not borne out of a question, per se. This one's my own experience that I want to share.
I know my regular readers are probably sick and tired of me evangelizing
(really just a nice term for "harping on") the need for regular and complete
backups. (Perhaps almost as tired of that as they are Hotmail password articles
.)
But if you're not backing up or you think it just doesn't apply to you - it's time to rethink and back up. The end is nearer than you think.
The end of your drive, that is.
•
My 1.5 Terabytes of Woe
This morning I woke up to failing hard drive: the primary hard drive on my primary machine ... again. It had been working just fine since I installed it as a replacement for a prior hard disk failure a few months ago.
As I type this, the repair and recovery software (SpinRite) is doing it's magic, with a projected completion of ... 5 days from now.
Did I mention that this is a 1.5 terabyte drive?
The replacement will be here and installed before the repair operation is completed.
That's just one of several new ways of thinking about hard drives that I think is important to cover.
Hard Drive Lifespan
How long should a drive last? I have no idea. All I know is that if it contains something that matters Murphy's Law means that a hard drive probably won't last as long as you want.
The drive I'm having troubles with was around four months old. That seems young, but then again it was also my primary drive - the drive used the most, and it's on my primary machine - the machine I use the most.
And it's the largest drive I own - 1.5TB.
In researching its replacement, I read some very interesting and insightful comments expressing ideas that I think are worth repeating here - if for no other reason than to put the fear of failure in front of you to get you to start backing up.
Drives are Huge
I don't mean just big, I mean frakkin' HUGE! I mean, really, one and a half trillion bytes in a single small enclosure? Using my "Bible as a somewhat more understandable measurement of size" approach - that hard drive could hold the full contents of 300,000 copies of the Bible.
Capacity comes at a price, however.
The drives have gotten larger in capacity, but the actual drives are physically the same size. If anything, as the capacities have gotten larger the drives themselves have become smaller. That means that hard drive manufacturers are squeezing more bits per inch on the media putting them right on the bleeding edge of readability.
It's a well known fact that today's hard drives have incredible error rates - but you typically don't see that because of all the error detection and correction techniques that are involved. It's only when the errors exceed a certain severity or quantity that you and I as users start to see things actually fail.
The important take away? Drives are always closer to failure than you think.
Drives are Cheap
I don't mean inexpensive, I mean frakkin' CHEAP! I ordered a replacement drive (downsizing to "only" 1 terabyte) for $70 - including next-day shipping. Seventy dollars. All the major brands were comparably priced.
High capacity disk drives have become a commodity. More importantly: a replaceable commodity.
If your hard drive dies, it's incredibly cheap to replace it. Heck, you'll probably get a larger capacity drive as part of the bargain. Such a deal.
Hard drive manufacturers are struggling - not just to stay ahead of each other, but to continue with a viable approach to making money. With drives being as cheap as they are, you know that the manufacturers can't spend a ton of effort in QA and test on each device. My suspicion is that the number of drives that arrive dead is much higher than it used to be. I'll also bet that "infant mortality" rates (drives, like mine, that experience a problem within the first few months of use) is also much higher than in the past.
The important take away? Drives are allowed to fail more often because they're so cheap to replace.
But What About the Data?
Aye, there's the rub.
The drives may be cheap and easy to replace if they fail - even if they fail often.
But your data? Not so much.
Which leads me to the inevitable and quite expected conclusion: back up.
I may recover my 1.5 TB drive, and I may not. When the replacement arrives I'll restore my most recent backup and carry on. Absolute worst I'll reinstall from scratch, but in no case will any meaningful data be lost.
Now, you may never experience a failure. You may have a drive that's in fantastic shape that'll last for years.
Or not. You don't know. And if you think you know, you're wrong.
If your data is stored in only one place, then it's not backed up.
If that one place is a hard drive, it may well be more vulnerable than you think.
The solution is simple.
Article C4379 - July 24, 2010
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
Leo, friend, are you suggesting that there are no reliable hard drive companies you might recommend as being superior to less reliable providers of such products. Surely, there must be, at least one company that produce reasonably respectable hard drives. If, as you seem to indicate, all current hard drive manufacturers fall short of "state of the art" reliability, perhaps I'm better off retaining my current one, until, if and when, such is available, in the relative short term, and, of course diligently backing up my data, per your guidelines. You are a Major source of insight, yet I suspect there must be sound knowledge as to decent, superior hard drives, you happen to be unaware of. I cannot imagine that an entire industry would subscribe to producing a questionable product. On the other hand, if you are indicating that no hard drive manufacturer has achieved, as yet, an excellent, and statistically reliable hard drive, and you have solid evidence for such, please provide factual information. Thank you sir.
Posted by: John L Brown at July 29, 2010 9:24 PMBacking up to an image file will work great.
But what if not only the hard drive but the computer is fried, lost or otherwise gone? If I have to replace the computer the image will not work, even if the drives are the same size.
So beside backing up my notebook to an external drive I frequently backup the MY Documents folder, where I keep all my personal files, to a USB pen drive and keep it at another location. These little USB drives are getting bigger and cheaper so it makes sense to be careful. I live in California near a major earthquake fault, so I never know when the BIG ONE will hit and take everything with it.
Posted by: Ken at July 31, 2010 11:16 PMLeo, you're 100% correct, we'll never know for sure how long our hard drives will last. That's why I keep a second one on hand, larger than my current one, as well as a 500GB Seagate backup drive, and use Acronis True Image 2010 Home Edition as my backup system. It's the best on the market. However, if you can't afford Acronis, Macrium Reflect has a really good free backup program, and the one that's included with Windows 7 is good, too. I've used both free options, and recovered with both.
Posted by: Charles Tilley at August 2, 2010 7:37 PMBut not having a backup at all is flirting with disaster, and I learned the hard way too. Paid or free, I will have some sort of a usable backup program, and drive to store it on.
And lastly, don't forget to create your bootable media (CD), as without it, your backup may still be useless.
Just bought and installed a new hard drive yesterday as I was running out of space. Thanks for the article as it reminded me to backup important files such as my photos, docs and uni stuff.
I wish I could backup everything but as my comp has 9 hard drives and almost 8TB of files thats a bit of a stretch.
It would take:
11428 CD's
1702 DVD's or 851 DL
320 Blu Rays or 160 DL... HA!!!!
My point in all of this is a question: When do you foresee the next major leap in storage capacity and what tech is it most likely to involve?
05-Feb-2011
Out of the blue while in my email i get a hard drive failing and a ding and then several flasing messages!I then get a message to restore my files or defrag and stop HD failure.The cost of this ?software was $79 with $6 addl to back up data in case it ever happened again.In a complete panic that my computer was crashing as it was freezing up and flashing HD failure,I purchased this software.It says windows recovery so I thought it was related to windows.After things went back to normal but with some files lost,minor.I called the number on invoice,looked at adddress in Ca with a non- existent zip code, and phone numbet that seemed the same.Today the number did produce a voice that told me they were in India and called Magic Software ,Inc. I asked how they got on my computer as it was coincidentally failing and claimed I had downloaded the standard trial version and wad prompted to purchase full version during the failure.He stated that he could not tell me the CA location of company they worked for in India.I have virus protection.Can you tell me if this makes sense or can hackers or so called legitimate companies access and make it appear that your hard drive is failing as you are on the net? It has freaked me out as I see no sign of the installed and told them so.Oh so now the software did not install completely and sending to my email.HELP!!!![le/
03-Jun-2011
Posted by: Arucatv at June 1, 2011 6:38 AM