Warning: External Hard Drives

Submitted by Rick on March 27, 2006 - 8:18pm.

One of my mantra's over the years is about backup. Over the past few days, I have been working for a newer customer who hasn't heard my sermons.

He had a "computer expert" setup an extremely complex home network and a NAS (Network Attached Storage) backup system. None of this is out of the ordinary. However, unfortunately, this was the only backup the customer had. Last week, his external hard drive failed. All of his important data existed on that drive that was seemingly lost.

External hard drives use the same hard drives we have in our computers with an added few components to allow the drive to function independent of a computer. Problem is that a hard drive is a hard drive...moving parts and all. Moving parts eventually fail and power can quit as well. These increasingly inexpensive devices work fine as a secondary backup...but should never by your primary drive.

Thus my mantra; always have important computer files saved in at least two different spots and one of those spots should be on removable media with no moving parts like DVD's, CD's, or USB flash drives. Search our site for the word 'backup', and you will find many articles and tips to help you learn how and what to back up.

IF, you have just found our site and haven't heard or followed my mantra, here are some sites that can help you recover data from dead drives:

  • Drivesavers.com (expensive, but not if losing your data is the alternative)
  • This free utility can help recover data from some dead external hard drives.

I used the second one to recover my customer's data.