If you are planning on using a computer on a regular basis than you had better plan on locating a reliable computer technician who will be able to help you recover your lost data when your hard drive crashes. You shouldn’t assume that just because you have a brand new, state of the art, computer that your hard drive will never crash. Even the most reliable computer can suffer from hard drive failure that can cause you to lose your data. Even if your computer never crashes there is also the chance that you will inadvertently do something that will erase one of more of your files. The more people who have access to your computer the more likely you are to experience data loss.

What you should never do is assume that you will be able to recover your lost data by yourself. More often than not, you will do more damage than good.

The first thing many people do when they start to experience problems with their hard drive is they use the system recovery disk that came with their computer. While this might be all that you need to reboot your computer, more often than not the disk is designed to restore your computer to its original factory settings. This means that all of your files will be wiped clean and you will be unable to recover them. There are some software programs that have been designed to recover lost data after your hard drive crashes but the programs are usually very complicated and the software should is only effective when it is used by someone who knows what they are doing.

Another thing that you should not do is try to rebuild your own hard drive. Just like a car engine, a computer’s hard drive is a very complex piece of equipment and the parts are very fragile. If you are truly interested in learning how to rebuild a hard drive you should find an old computer that doesn’t have any valuable files and use it to practice. If you are trying to rebuild a hard drive you should make sure that you are working in a room where the exposure to dust is minimal and make sure you keep the parts free of fingerprints and debris.

When your hard drive crashes you should make sure that the computer technician you hire has experience with your computer’s operating system. You should also be very clear about what data you would like to have restored. In addition to recovering your lost data the computer technician should also be able to diagnose and repair whatever caused your hard drive to crash.

It is normal to experience a moment of intense panic when you turn on your computer only to find that your hard drive is no longer working. Chances are pretty good that instead of wondering why your hard drive has suddenly crashed you are more concerned about all of the data that you had on your computer that you haven’t quite gotten around to properly backing up.

It doesn’t take most of us very long to figure out that the best way to avoid the stress of constantly worrying about the loss of data do to hard drive failure is to make sure that we regularly back up our computer files. The most common way of backing up our data files is to copy the files to a CD-ROM, although more and more of us are using a flash drive to back up files that we are still working on.

Backing up Your Files

The best way to protect your data files is to make sure that you create a back up copy of your files. Most companies require that their employees to save whatever they are working on to their hard drive several times a day and than at the end of the day, before turning off their computer for the day, the employee has to create a back up of all their data files.

The problem that some of us have run into is that, even though we though we were being smart by burning our important files to a CD-ROM is that when we insert the CD into our computer to open the file, we learn that for some reason the file either doesn’t exist or is corrupted.

The best way that I have found to make sure that my files are still available is to e-mail my important data files to myself. I simply attach whatever file I need backed up to an email and send it to myself. Not only is the file backed up and safe, I can access the file on any computer I happen to be working on, provided I have internet access.

Hard Drive Failure

If your hard drive does fail and you have not yet had a chance to back up your files, all is not lost. All you have to do is to take your computer to a certified computer technician and ask them to recover your lost data from your hard drive before they repair the problem.

If you suspect that your hard drive is getting ready to crash you should back up all of your current data files and shut your computer off right away. The faster you get your computer to a professional computer tech the less damage your hard drive will sustain.

No doubt you have heard about solid state drives (commonly abbreviated, SSD). So you might be wondering what are they and is it important that I get one. Well in basic terms a solid state drive is exactly what the name implies, a hard drive that carries no moving parts. A regular hard drive is made up of a bunch of disks (about the size of compact disks) that spin at high speeds (average between 5400rpm and 7200rpm) which allows you to store information as well as read and write to the device. On the other hand a solid state drive carries none of these moving parts.

Advantages

Now the advantages of a solid state drive can be great or not so great depending on what your requirements are. Generally speaking, it’s harder for your information to be lost on a solid state drive because it carries no moving parts, thus if you should drop your device (in this case a netbook, notebook or desktop), your hard drive will still be in tact. Another advantage is the fact that solid state drives use less power and so are much better for power consumption in mobile systems (like netbooks and notebooks) then regular hard disk drives (HDD). Since the SSD use RAM like memory modules to store its information, the battery does not have to work very hard to keep spinning the hard disks it would have to do had it been a regular hard disk drive.

Another great advantage is the speed of SSD’s. They are much faster because their technology is similar to random access memory (RAM) in that they can be written to and from fairly fast. Last but not least SSD’s are smaller in size then regular HDD and so can hold more information in a smaller amount of space.

Disadvantages

Now as usual with any type of technology there are a few disadvantages that one might want to take into consideration before purchasing said thing. Dealing with SSD’s the major drawback is price. Since the technology is pretty new (at least to the consumer public) it is quite expensive. You can pay round about $2-300.00 on a 320-680GB HDD for your desktop or notebook. On the other hand most SSD’s double in price for their equivalent in a regular hard disk format. For instance if you were to buy that same amount of space on an SSD you would have to be willing to pay nearly or in excess of $1,000 (600+GB = $1,000).

Another major drawback is the “bugginess” of a lot of SSD that are on the market. As I said before the technology is pretty new on the consumer front and just like any new technology, bugs and troubles always follow. Without calling names, many manufacturers have been plagued with problems such as their SSD loosing space over time due to firmware problems. More importantly sometimes fixes are not available in a timely fashion.

Another problem is the sheer performance upgrade and speed of most computers is quite minimal, and unless you are a power user you will not notice any major differences in performance. In fact if you’re reading this article chances are you won’t need an SSD for performance reasons. In terms of battery life, it would be cheaper in most cases to buy another battery of the same size or an extended one then installing an SSD on your laptop or buying one with the option as it would be less expensive.

Conclusion

So here is my proposition. Unless you are filthy rich, or you are a computer power user you might want to think twice before getting yourself one. But if you are clumsy and prone to drop your system then you might want to consider going with an SSD for data protection. Speaking of which, your best option in that case would be to combine an SSD with a ruggedized notebook so you’re not just securing one component, but the whole system.

As I have said many times before, the best thing to do is to wait a few years before adopting a new technology because if you do wait, you will save yourself headache and money as the prices of anything in the technology field always go down and never up.