This is probably the saddest data loss story I’ve ever read…
Everyone, I implore you to back up your most important files, and the ones that you simply CANNOT lose, burn them to DVD and label them…
Excerpt: “There is a tightness in my chest, and I am crying right now. I have just suffered a catastrophic data loss for the second time in my life. Fool me once, shame on, shame on, fool me can’t get fooled again, or something like that.
In college, a freak transformer explosion and subsequent power surge killed my hard drive. From that point on, I swore to always back up my data, and mostly I did just that.
…..
Two days after moving in, the drive started clicking. I knew that sound from my college crash…..
…..
I was too late. I took the drive to Tekserve on 23rd St. It would cost $2,000, but can you put a price tag on your memories and thousands of hours of media production? They couldn’t recover it. They sent it on to DriveSavers who said it may cost up to $6,000.
I had recently closed out my Discover Card, but decided it was worth going back into nasty credit card debt. Then today, I got the phone call. “We have some bad news.”
They could recover nothing. They will just charge $400 for the attempt. It’s funny, I struggled with the decision to send them the drive considering the cost but it is so clear now that I would rather have paid $10,000 to get my data back.
……
[FB: Among losing video and mp3s, this is the saddest one]
…….
My mother. At the end of it all, I am pained by the loss of the above items, but nothing can represent the sense of anguish I feel at having lost audio of my mother who passed away two years ago. We had taken a cross-country drive together, and I recorded hours of conversation. I only got to podcast a little bit of it (which can be redownloaded from my webhost) but the unedited stuff is beyond valuation. It’s like losing her all over again.
I certainly blame Lacie for the drive that failed, but my data is my responsibility. I will mourn this loss forever, and I really will never let it happen again. I’m trying to be open minded about this. It’s the most aggressive “spring cleaning” I’ve ever done. Even with my mother’s memories, I have thousands of photos and a bit of video. Mostly I have her in my heart, and if I think about it, I just happen to live in an era where it’s possible to capture image and sound in such high fidelity. Most of the people that ever lived had no such technology to remind them of their lost loved ones. The best memories are always going to be with me.”
Read the entire post here: “Please back up your hard drive now, twice“
Isn’t that sad? 
Irreplaceable images and videos of your family, friends or anything very important and dear to you should be burned to DVD. Everything else that can be replaced, should be kept on external hard drives (for me, that’s audio, video… nothing too special). I also burn my very important projects to DVD.
I’ve lost a ton of data over the years from bad habits, and now, I back up my work nightly – it really relieves stress.
