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Data Recovery Services: The Cost of Not Backing Up
Recently I learned the hard way how it important it is to back up your data regularly. Like most people running a business from their home I did not pay much attention to a specific routine for scheduled back ups of data on our two computers. Once a month stretched in to two then three and so on. Recently the unthinkable happened. First mistake was not paying attention to warning signs. My wife had been complaining that her HP computer was freezing in the middle of working with her clients and she was forced to reboot. That happens to me all the time and I reasoned it off to software conflicts or other non-critical causes. Second mistake was installing new software. I installed the latest Norton Antivirus software on my wife's computer. The installation went fine and I was able to create a complete set of rescue disks. Never did it enter my mind to make a backup of all her data before installing the new software. The next day she called to tell me that the computer was locking up again and she had to reboot several times. The last time she rebooted she received an error message: operating system not found. I came home and inserted the Norton Rescue Disk but it would not work. The rescue disk generated an error message that it could not find the files need to recover. It was then that I realized that it was a hard disk failure. I packed up the HP computer, which was only seven months old, and took it to the service center. I made sure that I told them that if they had to replace the hard drive, that I wanted the old drive back as I would have to recover about six months worth of data. I set my wife up with an older computer and restored the data from my last back up. About two weeks later I picked up her HP computer with a new 30 gig hard disk along with the failed 30 gig Maxtor hard disk. The service center reported that there was a mechanical failure in the hard drive and was not repairable. I contacted HP customer service and they confirmed that their policy is to not repair failed hard drives but simply to replace them. I then promptly contacted OnTrack, a nationally recognized data recovery service, and paid $100 for an evaluation of what could be recovered from the hard drive. They reported, in less than a day, that there was approximately 3 gig of information available for recovery from the hard drive. They confirmed that although there was a mechanical failure that prevented power from getting to the hard drive, all the data on the hard drive was intact and could be recovered. They sent me a list of the files that they could recover and I quickly determined that all the information added since my last back up was available for recovery. They estimated the cost to recover the data would be between $400 and $2,500. The next lesson I learned is how data recovery services charge. OnTrack's fees are based not only on the difficulty of recovering the data but also on the size of the hard drive. Eventhough they only had to recover 3 gig of files they charge based on the fact that it was a 30 gig hard drive. The cost to recover the 3 gig was $1,395 plus the cost of the media. The 3 gig ended up fitting on 5 cds. I recovered all the lost data and now recognize the importance of backing up data regularly.
Lessons Learned:
Pay attention to warning signs of computer problems.
Back up all critical data files before installing new software.
Establish a regular backup schedule.
Follow the schedule religiously.
Recognize the cost of data recovery.
Bottom line: was it worth recovering the data? Absolutely as the cost of recreating the lost data was far in excess of the $1,500. But the cost could have been avoided with regular back ups. In this day and age of larger and larger storage media it is critical that you establish a backup routine and stick to it. First low cost option would be to backup to CD. Second option would be to Zip disk. Other low cost alternative would be installing a second hard drive. The cost of a backup strategy is a lot less than the cost of using a data recovery service if your system fails. So if you didn't get the message; backup, backup, backup! Don't get caught like I did!
Editor's Note: I have since heard from others of problems with HP hard drives. If you have had a hard drive failure with an HP computer send an email to editor@auditnet.org. The voice of many can force HP to take action.
