Re: [pyrnet] Computer crashes [was: For those who email with Cindy Henke]

[Gerry Koehler <lenscap@socal.rr.com>]

Barb wrote:
Cindy's computer had a major crash recently, and she's lost MOST
of her address book.

Just a bit of advice.  Anybody's hard drive can crash and on occasion, they 
just do.  However, I have been working with computers, building them, 
upgrading, etc., and have never had this happen to me or any of my friends 
or clients until recently.  I had a new IBM GXP 75 GB drive that was 
starting to go bad and IBM replaced it with another one that totally 
crashed 7 days later.

I didn't practice what I preached, so I didn't have a recent backup.  It 
cost me just under $2000 for a data recovery service to retrieve my data - 
about 55 gigs out of the 63 or so that were on the drive.  And yes, Barb, 
it would cost the same amount for you, even with just a 2 GB drive.  :)

At the same time, one of my students emailed me an article from a magazine 
(I believe it was PC Maximum) that said that IBM was under a class action 
lawsuit for their GXP line of drives that was crashing left and right.  It 
further stated that the data was unrecoverable, so I guess I'm lucky.

I'm writing this just to remind you all to back up your important data - 
email addresses, phone numbers, databases, Internet favorites, pictures, 
etc, no matter what drive you have, but especially if your system came with 
one of the new IBM drives.  You don't even have to buy an expensive backup 
system.  CD burners can be bought for around $100 and backing up once a 
week can be done for well under a dollar each time.

Gerry



###  He who laughs last, thinks slowest  :)  ###



LensCap Gerry

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