What would you do if your hard drive died?

June 28, 2008

Cry?  Sigh and get on with life?  Maybe just get a new one and restore all your system files, applications and data with ease and be right back where you were before your hard drive decided to try and ruin your life? 

Well that is what happened to me not so long ago.  Sadly I did not head my own advice.  You see, my notebook has always been a second string computer.  All my real work was done at my desktop.  When I did use the notebook any files were just uploaded to the desktop and there they were backed up.  However I’m nowhere near my desktop.  My notebook may as well be all I have.  Did I back it up?  Nope.  Did I pay the price?  Yup.

Last week I had a bit of a problem.  A dying hard drive.  Only then did I try and back it up.  IT would work for a short time, then fail to work.  So with some patience and creativity I began to back up my data.  Apparently tilting the computer allowed the hard drive to spin more freely, thus getting me more time to copy data.  This ultimately did not work for long and eventually it could not get very many files off.  The good news is that the data was all saved.  The bad news (apart from having to open up the case and replace the hard drive) was that I had to reinstall my OS and all applications.  Did I mention they are all in a box…in San Antonio…in a pile of other boxes?  So I spent the better part of the next few days downloading applications on line, politely asking the developers for my misplaced serial numbers, and eventually getting the latest OS back on.  A HUGE inconvenience.

Had I been more careful I could have avoided all this with a simple ‘clone’ or image of my hard drive put on my backup external hard drive.  PC users…you are on your own.  Mac users here is what I suggest:

• buy a big external hard drive.  Big…huge even.  At least as big as your current drive.  Bigger is better.  500GB is good.  1TB better.  http://www.newegg.com has these for $125 to $200.  Well worth it.  Trust me.
• Now download Carbon Copy Cloner.  Its free and easy to use.  Create a clone of your system to the external drive.  Now you are ready to replace your hard drive and have a bootable backup of your system. 
• For those using 10.5 I’d also recommend using Time Machine.  Not sure what it does?  It lets you go back to previous versions of files, address book contacts, email…any file.  Great for those ‘oops’ moments when you save over a document or make changes you don’t like and then save by accident.
     
• Create a database of software licenses.  Its pretty easy to download the software these days.  The license is the real issue.  You’ll want that in electronic form that is easy to access.  A text file works well.  Then email it to a web based email account (Google’s GMail is great for on line file storage).  This way you can access these licenses from any internet connected computer.

There you have it.  How to save yourself from hours of work, loss of data, and possible extra expense from lost software/licenses.  If you want help in selecting a hard drive or anything else…I’m happy to help.