A Successful Recovery

So, as you may have guessed from my absence (and for that, I do apologize), or to reiterate if you’ve been following me tweets, I got my data back on Friday, July 9th, and have been working to catch up on everything since that point. The professional service I’d entreated to help me out (I did my best not to whimper when I handed the technician my comatose drive) was able to make a full recovery, and so it’s time for some name-dropping (because you have to earn that):

Data Recovery Group – I was helped by a Mr. Ron Davis, who is, apparently, a regional manager, and was very courteous and helpful. The diagnosis on the drive was a single bad head, which was replaced, and then I brought in a second hard-drive for him to transfer the recovered data onto.

The place was like a doctor’s office (a hard-drive doctor), and there were several previous patients (I guess they’d donated their bodies to science) lying dissected on a table by the check-in desk. It was very educational; I think all physicians should look into it.

The office was complete with a sign-in sheet and paperwork to fill out. The front desk extended from wall-to-wall like a blockade. The only way through was to climb over, and it was at least chest-height. I assumed this was for when the “doctor” had to tell people that the patient hadn’t made it. I can imagine folks getting pretty pissed/irrational in their grief, and I wondered if the technician kept some sort of ranged weapon behind the desk. I almost asked him if they had any referrals for grief counselors.

But, as I’d noted previously in Put Your Data in The Cloud, I hit up Mozy.com for a 2-year subscription as soon as I got home. It was around $88USD after a 15% off + 1 Month Free coupon I found on RetailMeNot. (As of 07.15.10, it’s the one at the top, BESTOFMONTH. It says 20% off, but it’s actually 15%.) I downloaded the Mozy software, selected what I wanted it to backup, and let’errip. The little spinning circle of life that indicated someone knew how to use Flash progress activity churned to life, and… and now I know why it’s called “Mozy”:

mo·sey mo·zy / [moh-zee] –verb
1.to wander or shuffle about leisurely; stroll; saunter

In other words, this sucker is slow. And when it’s on, the internet has a bad case of the lags. Granted, this will only be the case for the duration of the initial backup, but, if I did my calculations right, that could take anywhere from 2-5 months to complete. Yeah.

I’m only averaging 1.5 – 2 GBs of data uploaded per day at full speed, and that severely throttles bandwidth. Because of that, I’m only allowing Mozy to run at night when no one’s using the internet. Yes, I could decrease the amount of bandwidth Mozy’s allowed to use while uploading so it could run 24/7, but even then, the lag is just noticeable enough that the other household members get pissed, and shoot strings of frustrated, “R u d/ling sumthin!?” texts my way. I guess I’ll keep fiddling with it.

Once the initial download is completed, Mozy will run in the background (I’m hoping with little-to-no resource-hogging behavior), quietly backing up only the files that it detects have been updated since the last backup.

So, while the old, faulty hard-drive was KIA, I guess you could say “all’s well that ends well”. And while I may be significantly poorer because of my lack of foresight, whenever I lose money due to my own ineptitude, I like to look at it as the cost of a lesson well learned. In this case, the moral of the story is: always backup your data, because you’ll never know how much it’s worth until it’s (almost) gone.

Put Your Data in The Cloud

Word of advice, friends: never, ever, ever, never place sole trust in your equipment to keep your data safe. Doesn’t matter if you’ve been keeping all your photos and documents on the same computer for 10 years and it’s been running just fine, there are absolutely no guarantees. I used to do backups a couple of times a year, but that was when all of my files could fit on two 700MB DVD-RWs. Ha.

But why waste a hard drive bay or USB port (for an external HDD) for yet another drive which only serves as a backup device? Why not keep your data in the “cloud”? For those unfamiliar with the cloud, it is derived from the term “cloud computing”, which is basically just like regular computing (store your files, check your email, run software and tasks, etc.), only it’s done completely on the internet. Pretty cool, hey?

A much simpler use for the cloud, though, is simply as online storage for your files, and as a backup service. One such service (and one I’m definitely going to invest in) is Mozy.com. They offer unlimited storage space, a solid program for keeping your stuff backed-up, and very reasonable rates. Probably not for the security freaks, the paranoid, or the conspiracy theorists, but it’s a great alternative to dozens of DVDs or an extra hard drive lying around waiting for your computer to crash.

I say I’m “going to” invest in it, because I currently have no data to backup, and so Mozy is of no use to me at this moment in time. Why do I have no data to backup? Because it’s all sitting on a hard drive in a data recovery shop down the road. Why does the data recovery shop have my hard drive and, thus, my data? Because the piece of junk went and had an aneurysm during one of the recent electrical storms that have been passing through my area, and my data became inaccessible.

Frustrating? Yes. Scary? Yes. A very expensive lesson learned about backing up your data? Heck, yes. Should have kept my data in the cloud.