Today someone brought in their external USB backup drive.
You’ve got to help me; ALL my pictures are on this drive. I plugged it into my computer today, and it said, ‘drive needs to be formatted.’ Everything’s GONE!
Three times in the last week, I’ve worked on computers where the hard drive had crashed to the point of not being recoverable without considerable expense. Because of this, in this blog, I’ll explain data loss and how to prevent it.
Hard Drive Recovery
Often crashed hard drives can be “recovered.” However, the process is long and expensive. First, they have to be sent to specialists that physically take apart the drive platters and manually reconstruct your data. Second, it is usually several hundred dollars to recover data from a crashed drive.
Ransomware
Another way you can lose all your pictures is through Malware, particularly one called CryptoLocker. Cryptolocker is a type of Malware called Ransomware. Ransomware encrypts documents and images on all the hard drives (including your external USB drive). Once the program takes over your hard drive and encrypts all your files, then the program tells you how much it will cost you to get the files unencrypted. I give a good description of CrytpoLocker in a previous blog post, Avoiding Malware.
Cloud Backup
I’m not too fond of when I have to tell someone their hard drive is crashed, and their pictures are lost. Every time I have to do it, I always ask, “Do you have a backup somewhere?”
Usually, the answer is no. Everyone is sad.
The technology exists to ensure you never lose your data permanently. This is how to prevent losing your memories from your computer. Multiple solutions are available, but the solution I’m particularly fond of is cloud storage backup. Cloud storage backup protects your data from loss either through a hard drive failure, theft, fire, or the newest threat to your pictures, Crytpolocker, and its many variants. What are all your photos worth to you?
Pineywoods Computer has partnered with iDrive. I looked at quite a few providers, and they all had their pros and cons. iDrive won out for several reasons.
- Automatic Backup. Photos, documents (tax returns, college essays, etc.), music, and emails are automatically saved to the cloud.
- Set It & Forget It.
- iDrive works quietly in the background, continually adding new and changed files to the cloud – that means you’ll never have to add “backing up” to another to-do list again.
- Safety & Security. Your files are encrypted and sent to our state-of-the-art offsite data centers that are monitored by guards 24/7 and secured with other stringent technical safeguards.
- Easy File Recovery. With just a few clicks of your mouse, you can restore your precious family files and recover from unexpected computer glitches seamlessly.
- Sync & Share. Available to all iDrive customers, this free app syncs your work across all of your devices, allowing you to collaborate with family and colleagues on-the-go easily.
Pricing is extremely competitive. Unlimited storage for your home computer around $6/month. View all the iDrive Plans HERE.