Can’t Afford Data Recovery Now?

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

We’ve all been effected one way or the other with the struggling economy. It’s the expenses you don’t prepare for, or expect that hurt the worst. A car breaking down, an illness or injury; add a myriad of household repairs to the list and your budget is blown in the blink of an eye.

The average computer owner/user has never suffered a hard drive failure and often doesn’t realize it’s even possible. Sadly, disaster strikes when you least often expect it and often offers little to no warning for preparation.

So what should you do when you lose your data and recovery services just aren’t in the budget? First of all, DON’T MAKE REPEATED EFFORTS of booting or access attempts on your own or under the direction of a non-specialized recovery company. Each and every time the attempt is made the situation can be made worse or irreversible.

The best advice is to remove the hard drive from the system (if you’re unsure of how to do this have a professional do it). Place the hard drive in an antistatic bag. Label it with a date of the crash and a description of the contents you had stored on the drive that may be most important. If you have a safe or safety deposit box you may store it there. Otherwise, a shelf in your home office or similar out-of-the-way type place is fine. Bottom line is that a hard drive can survive years without further deterioration as long as it is in an even-temperature environment. No high-level humidity or extreme cool temperature conditions. Your hard drive can outlast this economic recession, whether it’s 5 years or 50 years. (shutter)