My 3TB Hard Drive that stopped working

Almost four years ago I built my own desktop computer.  I’d researched all the parts I’d need for a PC for the type of work I use it for, while sticking to a budget.  The build included two hard disc drives, the largest a 3TB Seagate Barracuda to store my growing collection of photos and video.  This week, that 3TB drive died, taking with it almost 2TB (2000GB) of data, including all my photos.  I’m so thankful now that I’ve always made sure I back up everything.

Back in the day, keeping a back-up meant burning the data onto a CD or DVD.  These days I have multiple copies of anything important, including at least one offsite or in the cloud.  I use Crash Plan for unlimited automatic off site back up my files, as well as copying selected important files to my Microsoft One Drive cloud account.

The only trouble with online cloud backup for me is my ADSL upload speed.  If I do a big photo-shoot, it can take weeks for everything to be uploaded and safely backed up online, so I also keep a local copy of any recent work.  Hopefully once we get the NBN connected (should be this week!) there will be a dramatic increase in upload speed, making cloud back-up complete quicker.

So my dead hard drive is merely an inconvenience, rather than a disaster.  My main concern now is shopping around for a new drive, or maybe investing in a multi drive raid NAS box, and restoring those backed up files.

If you are like so many people I know who only have their precious photos saved on their laptop, then you really should start thinking about a back-up strategy.  The experts will tell you that it’s only a matter of time, “when” – not “if”, you experience a HDD failure.

Back-Up your important data, back it up now!