Why do we all back up our data on our computers? What are the odds we will lose everything on the hard drive?

Answer 1

The odds are surprisingly good you will lose stuff. Maybe you won't lose everything at once, but a full backup ensures you'll be able to restore any one thing you lose, no matter what it is. Examples:

(1) You're on dialup or land-line DSL. Lightning strikes. Power surge! Either computer gets fried, or a sorely needed file directory gets confused mid-write.
(2) Virus-induced file-writing problems.
(3) (Happened to me) Laptop overheats, taking out the hard disk. System rebuild necessary.
(4) You erase an essential file, and somehow, the Recycle Bin fails to capture it...
(5) You need a prior version of a file (no, not the version in the Recycle Bin, but one a few months back...)
(6) Somebody else (a child? a spouse? your mom? a hacker? yourself in a moment of drunkenness or half-sleepy stupor?) gets to your computer and mangles an essential file.
(7) A Windows Update, or some other piece of software update, in the process of downloading, gets interrupted, somehow mangling things. Something becomes inoperable.
...get the idea?

Answer 2

Ok first of all, the woman didn't make just one mistake. She made several, one of them is that you can easily solve the internet problem without a new installation. Second is that you can't restore data after you formatted your hard disk. So i'm sorry to tell you but you lost all your data, the only thing you can do is download your paid software from the official website. Do you got a Key or Name/Password to unlock the trial or something like that? If you do, you can download a trial from the website and unlock it with the Key or Name/Password you got from them when you bought the software. If not, you better mail the makers of the software and explain what happened. I would suggest to buy a External Disk, and you should save all your documents, photo's, movies games etc on that disk. So when your hard disk crashes you still got your data.

Answer 3

It may not happen often, but when it does, you'll wish you had backed it up! When I got my first computer a few years ago, it worked fine. I started putting a bunch of favorite songs on it, etc. One day I clicked on a link on a webpage, heard a small "ping!" and the computer was dead. I'm not exactly sure how they work, but it was like a spring popped in the hard drive and it no longer worked. Luckily, it was still under warranty so they replaced the harddrive within a few days, but when you lose everything, it really sucks!

But I'm lazy, don't back up as much as I should. You'd think I'd learn! ;)

Answer 4

As long and you dont mess with softwares and dont go about randomly deleting files on your computer things should be fine. But we are talking about electronics here. they dont need any particular reason to fail. a shock, heat are just some of the small things that could kill your hard drive.

although this does not happen always, when it does, you will feel it, specially if you had anything really important on that hard drive.
so it is always a good idea to backup all your data atleat once a month.

Answer 5

funny coincedence,my external drives just packed up,and it had my jpegs,music,lucky enough theres a mirror image in my documents,all the ex hard drives just backed up data
so by even backing up to a back up device isnt 100% safe
safest way to back up is to dvdrw/cdrw,these(if kept clean and scratch free)can last for years,even decades
luckily ive only suffered 1 hard drive failure in the last 6 years,and that was 3 years ago and only a 20gb hdd
i beleive using r.a.i.d(redundant array of inexpensive disks)is a good fail-safe way of protecting your data,it uses mirroring which copies windows and data onto 2 disks,and if one fails,you still have a working disk
another type of raid called stripping,ises two disks,but if one drive fails the other one is useless
again,best method is back your data to dvd/cd...cant go wrong
good luck mate!

Answer 6

It all depends and what you do on your PC. i for instance install programs quite a lot and delete them and some of the programs i have installed have wiped my PC ,so i would say it would be a good idea if you keep personal things on there IE pics, vids, and things that are important to you. it not hard to do just drop me a bell and i will walk you though it.

Answer 7

Quite high, actually. When it happens to you - as it surely will - you will understand how it feels.
I pay £35 a month for online automatic back up to secure servers. Without that, if my computer network went down, my whole livelihood would go with it.

Answer 8

The risk of losing everything is directly proportional to how important it is to you and how long ago you backed up.
Sods Law.

Answer 9

All hard drives will eventually fail. The reason for backups is that we can't predict when.

Answer 10

Not all that high but, ooh, the inconvenience when it happens - like it just did 2 me.