Ever since my old desktop computer suddenly died on me (hard drive crash), I’ve switched to saving all my work on an external HDD (hard disk drive). I don’t partition my Sony VAIO desktop’s HDD, leaving the whole glorious whatever space they give me to the OS and installed programs. All data I generate (this site) goes directly to an external HDD connected by USB to the PC. Of course, I incrementally back up nightly to a second external HDD. This way if my PC conks out again (and it will one of these days), all I have to do is unplug the HDD and plug it into another PC or Mac and I’m good to go — as long as the other computer has all my software (which I hope will soon all come from the cloud).
So, the other day my Sony VAIO laptop crashed. The HDD was making lots of noise and I knew it was just a matter of time. But guess what? Since I had no data on the laptop’s HDD, no problemo. I am trying to get everyone at home into that habit of using an external HDD (even if it’s only the smaller portable one).
How about you? Do you have any HDD horror story?
Read How to Restore Your Data After a Hard Drive Crash @ Popular Mechanics.