Reminder: your data is impermanent

I seem to get a call about once a month now involving data recovery, so just a note to everyone who uses computers to do things: back up your data. If your data is important to you, don't assume it is safe unless it's backed-up, because:

• If you get a ransomware virus, your data is gone (or at the least, expensive to retrieve).
• If someone hacks into your computer, your data may be gone.
• If the hard drive inside your computer fails (median lifetime of most hard drives is about 6 years whilst 25% fail within the first 4 years), your data is gone.
• If the motherboard or power supply in your computer fails, your data may be gone.
• If your operating system or computer memory does something unexpected, your data may be gone.
• If you get a power spike/lightning strike and it makes it past your power supply, your data is gone.
• If you have a blackout/brownout, your data may be gone.
• If you accidentally delete your data, your data is gone.
• If someone else deletes your data, your data is gone.
• If your computer is stolen, your data is gone.
• If someone steps on the screen of your laptop and it doesn't have an external display port, you're gonna have to pay someone to retrieve the data or your data is gone.

If your data is gone, your data is Gone. When data is gone it doesn't like to come back so much. And data recovery can get expensive; between a hundred dollars for simple retrieval up to thousands of dollars if a situation involves total hard drive failure. Therefore it makes more sense to sort out your data recovery solution now, rather than later. The easiest way to make data 'not gone' is to back it up to an external hard drive using a free backup program like the ones built into Mac OSX and Windows.

Another method of backup is to have your documents in 'the cloud' (ie. on an internet server, somewhere) using Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Mega. However these solutions tend to be instant, rather than staggering the backups to once a week, so if you mess up something on your computer, likely it's messed up in 'the cloud' as well. The best solution is probably to do both (external hard drive weekly backup, plus cloud storage), but it depends on how important your data is to you. Either way, be smart, be safe. Don't assume your data is permanent.

- written by Matt Bentley