How much did it cost you to retrieve your backup?

[Melinda B]

Originally Posted by Dave@Perfectnotes

Thats a fair price if the drive was so buggered it had to be rebuilt.. but sheesh that must be one hell of a hard floor. I would not have expected that much damage.. I would expect to manage to get the drive to spin up.. in which case I would have thought maybe about $600... depending.

Smashed it. The laptop was dropped on a tiled floor with a reasonable amount of velocity - she was rushing at the time and when the cord caught it was yanked out of her hands. They were finding bits of computer around the kitchen for months.

My brother cannot be convinced to back up 20 K of outstanding invoices. But he sure understands that if his wife loses her digital photo albums his life is over. They are backed up

That is nuts.

[Dave@Perfectnotes]

They were finding bits of computer around the kitchen for months.

EEEk. He might have even been lucky then. My plan would not be to wipe the drive while the feds are knocking down the front door, I would be hitting it with a hammer. No data is being retrieved from that drive

That is nuts.

Well in his defence... she IS Sicilian

Partially my fault.. I did retrieve all his data from a dead drive once.. In fact he never paid me for that job so it cost me about $200 and half a days work to save him $20K... sigh. And I guess he thinks I can just keep doing that.

[Upside Down Web]

Hey Arthur

I have done 5 data recoveries this year, 4 @ 100% and 1 @ 90% retrieved data, i still push for the customer to use a online back up, its just to easy to set and just let it do its job.
People dont under stand - Hard Drives Fail - its so easy just to download the backed up data.
Carbonite Rocks

[Sams]

We automatically back up data on our laptops and flashdrives each day to a mirrored pair of 1 TB disks (RAID-1) on a separate PC using the free 'backuppc' product. Critical data is also stored on Amazon S3, which costs $0.15 (USD) per GB per month.

[oscsau]

Originally Posted by mexham

I heard the DJ's talking about this on the radio the other day. One of the jocks was quoted $1250+ Gst to retrieve his data.

My external crapped out once also, but luckily my flatmate worked at a computer shop and fixed it at home for nothing. Only took a couple of hours from memory.

With the external Hard Drive the most problem is the controller in the case which connects your computer to the HDD using USB. All it needs to be done is crack up the case and put the HDD into a new case and it should start working.

If your HDD had physically died then yes it cost a lot of money to retrieve the data. It might need to be sent to specialise organisation who have very special equipment to retrieve your data.

The best thing to do is BACKUP

[Melinda B]

Originally Posted by Sams

We automatically back up data on our laptops and flashdrives each day to a mirrored pair of 1 TB disks (RAID-1) on a separate PC using the free 'backuppc' product.

The problem with this is that if you have a break-in or a fire then your backups are destroyed as well.

Critical data is also stored on Amazon S3, which costs $0.15 (USD) per GB per month.

If the above happens then this is all you'll actually be able to recover.

Backups are not just in case of a crashed hard drive, they're there to protect your data from theft and destruction.

[Sams]

Originally Posted by Melinda B

If the above happens then this is all you'll actually be able to recover.

Yes, but nothing critical to running the business as I mentioned. I forgot to mention that client websites, databases and so on are housed on servers in data centres. Remote backups also run automatically there between the servers (in different geographical locations), or into Amazon AWS. In fact, we regularly store several GB of rolling backups to AWS per day for the database of one client that runs health information kiosks around Australia.

[Carbonite Australia]

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. Its great to here that many people are using online backup (not just Carbonite), its also great (for me anyway and my story) to hear what you have gone through to learn the backup lesson.

Hard drives crash, PC break, they get stolen and get damaged. I always recommend that people use 2 forms of backup both online and offline.

The offline side of it can be tedious and time consuming but its important that small businesses take it as seriously as they take their customer relationships.

Over time, online backup will become second nature to everyone because we will have so much in the cloud, it will just happen for us. Until then though, keep up to good work educating people about the danger and what they can do about it. If they aren't ready to go online then send them to DickSmiths or the local PC store to buy and external drive. Better than nothing.

[Backup Guy]

I am also in the on-line backup business and I have found that many people focus on the computer as a piece of office equipment that is easily replaced but forget about the value of the information on it to them.
One of my clients runs a networking business and lost her contact database one day - over 10,000 names! Had she not been a client she would have been out of business but I got them back for her in a matter of minutes. Sadly there are also people who have come to me after the event and their only recourse was to try the HDD recovery which besides being expensive does not always work.

I agree the sentiment use more than one type of backup - I call it defence in depth. Any system can fail at a critical time (particulaly if a person remembering to do something is required) but the more systems you have the less likely it is that they all fail together!

Probably preaching to the converted by the sounds of the posts in this thread so keep up your good work!

Alan
betterbackup.com.au

[Carbonite Australia]

The reality is that people just don't realise that what is on their work PC's is just as important to their business as are the customers that call them on the phone or walk into to the store.

And unfortunately having a new PC doesn't mean you are less likely to have a crash. Vista unfortunately caused me to wipe my hard disk twice and my laptop was 3 months old.

Some day, PCs and laptops will come with an online backup service much the same as what happens with internet security today. You will also have more ISPs looking to offer it as a value add.