I have owned a PC since 1980 - remember the Commodore Vic-20? For most of that time, I have owned multiples - the count is now 5. In all that time, I have never had a hard drive crash, so I've gotten a little sloppy about backups.
Two weeks ago, it finally happened. In the end, I had the local pro put in a new hard drive, and do a data recovery on the crashed unit - they call it a "scrape", and it is expensive. A "scrape" doesn't even try for the applications - it is assumed that you can find a copy and reload them (anyone want to help me with an HP printer driver????). Instead, they try for the data files - documents, photos, etc. In my case, he got most, but not all. My last backup, a couple months ago, had the photos, but the big loss was my email, which is, in effect, a history file for a lot of issues and events.
The point of this sad story is not that backups are important - everyone knows that. But he told me two things. First, RAID is cheap these days. For less than the cost of the scrape, he would install a pair of identical disks - big disks - and a RAID controller. Voila, instant and complete backup, bit-for-bit. It won't help if your house burns down, but it is wonderful protection against a hard drive crash. For a bit over $100, you can't go wrong.
If I didn't want to go RAID for some reason (and there are some), he suggested I buy one of the Western Digital Elements Portable SE hard drives. They have capacities from 500 GB to 1 TB, for well under $100. They are small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, they are plug-and-play with a simple USB cable, and you use them just like any other hard drive - no special interface software is needed. In addition, they are powered by the USB cable, and so have no need for a docking station or wall wart. If you use one of these, backup is still a manual operation, but it is simple drag-and-drop at the file or folder level. I own one, and I love it.
I have to admit, I have been living in the past. I thought that BIG drives and ADVANCED technologies like RAID were still terribly expensive. Not so. I'm on board now.
Bill
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