911 and 77 (21)
At the beginning of this series of articles I had in mind the total loss of your laptop but it needs to be understood that it isn't necessary for this to happen to end up in the same boat, failure of the hard drive will have the same result. Do drives fail? Inevitably they must do despite how reliable and excellent they usually are. This is because they have moving parts but also because of the precision involved and relative sensitivity to physical shock. But even if there weren't any moving parts the risk, although much less, would still be enough to cater for it. It is best to assume that it will fail when you least need it to!
In my own personal experience I have had a new drive fail within six months without any evident cause. And, I will admit and confess a true story now.
A few months ago I decided to connect up my two clone drives to my USB hub to my laptop. Disaster. You may think that all these little itty bitty power blocks are standardised so that you can't mix and unmatch them. Wrong. You may think that modern computer equipment has protection against overvoltage. Wrong. You may think that modern hard drives are protected against over voltage. Wrong. Take it from me and don't ever, never ever, ever, connect your power block for your external DVD writer into your USB hub. Indeed, don't ever connect a 9 volt little itty plug into a 5 volt little itty bitty socket that, physically it matches and mates with perfectly. What happens is that all the leds flash nicely but unexpectedly and you may get a slight smell of something vague. An hour later when you have opened up all the enclosures and tested the various items you may well make the same discovery as I did. Both hard drives destroyed by over voltage, a USB hub similarly blown. Ah but the good news and it made up for the bad I have to tell you, is that my laptop was not affected. The really funny thing is that I know enough not to make a stupid mistake like that but I made it anyway, moreover, I had carefully stuck little labels onto the little itty bitty power block plugs to identify them just so that no such mistake would be made.
That is true and unexaggerated and I destroyed BOTH my clone drives in seconds. I bought two more the same day and only when I had my replacement clone did I feel safe again. That cost me money and was a suitable blow to my ego and I risked losing all my work - if the laptop had been blown too at the same time then many years of computing work - hundreds or thousands of hours worth, would have gone down the drain.
But I'm not bitter. It was my own mistake. Please learn from my mistake, take good care of your data and think about how you'd feel if you lost it all. And don't ever put all your clones in one basket - never, ever, connect them all up together like that, not even properly, just don't.
Regular backup and clone sessions are standard for me now. It's good insurance that can cater for both scenarios, loss of laptop or loss of just the hard drive.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
27 May 2008
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