Make Good Back-Ups!

So, I had a hard-drive go south on me last night.  It was one of the drives I use for back-ups so there was zero data loss, but it drives home this VERY important point-

 It's not "if" a harddrive fails, it's "when"

 

Over the last 2 decades I've learned this lesson in horrible and painful ways. As you may imagine I've got a lot of harddrives and I've had quite a few of them fail on me. Make good back-ups and keep them up to date.  Don't mess about with "image" back-ups that create a single huge file of your entire drive (esp the system drive).  Incremental back ups that monitor changes and only modify/create files that have changed since the last back-up are the way to go. In the last 4 hours, I've backed up multiple terabytes, a job that would take DAYS with image back-ups. I use SyncToy, a free Windows utility. I'm not saying it's the best, it's just what I'm used to.

"Infant mortality" is high for modern harddrives, don't going on a deleting spree just because you've got a brand new drive and want to "make room" on your old drives.  For a new drive's first few months NEVER keep anything on it that isn't backed-up some where else.  I know this is counter-intuitive, but new drives are dangerous and not to be trusted. This is the lesson that took me longest to learn.

Look at your digital life.  It can go POOF in a moment. It's a horrible feeling and I wouldn't wish it on anybody. I've had a lot of drives fail in the last ten years, but it's been even longer since I've had disastrous data loss, because I MAKE GOOD BACK-UPS.