Hard Drive Goes Click, Click, Click, ...

If you have ever fired up your computer just to hear your hard drive make clicking sounds then you know what I am talking about. This is often the sound of death for a hard drive. It is not a pleasant experience. In fact, it can be a downright sickening feeling when you hear that clicking sound coming from your computer and see a message like "Invalid System Disk" or "No System Disk"... I have been using personal computers since the early 1980's and larger systems before that. I have experienced many hard drive failures over the years.

When one of my disk drives dies, it is only a minor inconvenience to me. I have to buy a new one, install it, and restore my data. That all takes time, but I don't have that sinking feeling that comes with losing data. Unlike most other small business and home computer users, I expect my hard drives to fail. I am fully aware that any of my hard drives can fail at anytime. Therefore, I diligently backup my data. Actually, I don't do much of anything. My data is automatically backed up by an online backup system. I rarely do any manual backups.

I think most of us who are computer professionals realize that any data that is worth keeping needs to be backed up. I hope the rest of you will get the message and understand that all hard disk drives fail. Even a new drive can fail. The only way to ensure that your data will not be lost is to back it up.

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