Don’t get caught hearing the click of death without having a backup. One of our very own, here at Nspire, tells why being prepared, even with new hardware, is essential since you never know when a hard drive might crash.
Hard drives… we all use them every day and we all expect them to just work. But, as I recently have been reminded of, they can fail… sometimes more than once.
In the last three weeks I’ve gone through 3 hard drives. It all started when I heard “the click of death”. I had just upgraded my laptop hard drive to a new 500GB drive, since the previous drive was showing signs of imminent failure.
I was so excited I went out and purchased a couple precision multi tools to get the job done. I even purchase some kind of precision tool that looks like the equivalent of a miniature ice pick with a handle… why? I don’t know, but you never know when you might need a precision ice pick tool; I might have to fend off some hard drive demon or computer bug. Being the boy scout I am I had to live up to the motto of “be prepared”.
With the help of my precision tools and the assurance of my precision wanna be ice pick I was able to tackle the task of replacing my hard drive and installing the greatest operating system known to man… OS X Leopard.
Then it happened. I heard it as clear as day… it was the “click of death”.
Now the click of death is the tale-tell sign that your new hard drive is about to kick the bucket. It happens when your computer tries to write to the hard drive (example: saving a document) but then freezes and you can hear a faint but repetitive click. Sometimes it only lasts for a minute and then goes away, other times it clicks until you have no choice other than to force the computer to shut down and hope it starts again.
Being the geek I am I knew what was about to happen. So I quickly had a replacement drive shipped to me, backed up my clicking drive one last time and installed the new one. Problem solved. At least I thought so.
It wasn’t but about a week after installing my 2nd drive that it crashed completely. No clicking, no faint coughs, fever… nothing… it just skipped all that and went straight to the “kicking the bucket” part of it’s life cycle. Maybe it was afraid I would go and buy more tools and try to “fix” it and it just couldn’t bear the thought of going through all that. I guess I’ll never know.
Moving on, I ordered my 3rd replacement drive and going through all the same processes as before I reinstalled all my information from a backup I had made earlier. I’m happy to say that I’m using that very drive now to type this blog post. Hopefully it will stick around.
What can you learn from my hard drive saga? Backing up needs to be a habit. Most people would think they could easily get a few years out of a new hard drive before experiencing any problems. In my case, I only got a few days each time. The point, 100% of all hard drives will fail at some point… it’s just a matter of when.
So what can you do?
Start backing up. I recommend a 2 stage backup plan.
1. Backup to an external hard drive or server drive on the network. (This drive should be off-site or remotely backed up)
2. Use an Online Backup solution that implements daily backups with version control for files.
If you are looking for a good Online Backup tool I recommend taking a look at our Nspire Online Backup (NOB) software. You will get the best security in the business, version controlled backups, error prevention monitoring, and much more. You can sign up or learn more by going to www.nspiresoftware.com/onlinebackup
We offer plans for just backing up your Nspire Software product up to backing up your entire computer. Check it out. Let us know if you have questions 1-888-297-6495
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