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Would this topic be the one to not be talked about, after all it is a silent killer most of the time.

We may be common with BSoD Blue Screen of Death as they call it when your computer screen shows you some white gibberish line on a blue background, this is really feared by not only creatives but anyone who uses the computer for a daily duty.

Although if I may add this is peculiar with windows and for Linux users like me I do not have worry about BSoD because it is actually a Windows “stop” screen and its designed to do two things: 1- to tell you the reason for the error and 2- to calm your nerves, hence the use of the color blue, they claim studies show blue has a relaxing effect on people but I ask you how many of you are calm when you see the blue screen? Terrible as that may sound we however often do not realise that beyond BSoD is another deadly situation you might find yourself in and it is caused by a disease which is highly contagious, we will talk about the disease shortly but the real terrible situation... the HDD.

Hard Disk Drive crash possibilities are often over looked because many times it may not happen to us for a long time, it possibly may never happen to some... so they may think until it does.

Have you been on the verge of meeting a deadline after a hard process to accomplish the client or personal task and then you fire up your system to perhaps have a glance at your completed work or finally get it out of your system unto the final presentation medium and guess what?... its katablaam!!! your computer wont start up and you can't load any OS or anything, here we are talking about the physical failure of the drive and where you possibly begin to hear whir sounds or clicks or a combination of both, which initially you may assume is the sound of the fan but sorry its not the fan, as long your system is not loading the startup process.

While OS failures (also called logical failure) may cause the trouble for your hard drive, this discourse is about the OS so we wont dwell on that bit.

Often times you may happen to fire up your system and you see signs of hdd crashes imminent however you are still able to find ways to remedy it just in time but then in cases where you just cant seem to get access to your files and projects because your drive has failed and you know your files are still in there somewhere, it may be down to looking for software which could help you do the job or taking your system to a computer repair shop or ending up in panic so much that you just breakdown.

There are a few possible remedies, some would help you 100%, some will only recover part of the image or files while in other cases you may just have to reformat but that’s gonna be a very costly process if you have important data locked in since formatting attempts to wipe clean the drive for a fresh use.

One interesting remedy which I have been told works and I have actually tried myself is the 'freezer method'' oh yeah, you heard or tried it before... did it work?

The way I understand the process is to remove your hard drive, place it in a thin small towel and insert the wrapped drive in a waterproof or resealable plastic bag then keep it in your freezer overnight or a couple of hours... the idea is that your electronics elements normally heat up over time and expansion may occur which could lead to your hard drive malfunctioning or giving you the heads-up of an imminent crash, therefore placing in a constantly high cold temperature could possibly compress such expanded elements and you might just have your life back. So again I ask you, has it worked for you when you tried it? If it does work the best thing will be to immediately recover your files and back them up just in case its the last chance you have been presented a golden opportunity to access your files in that failing or failed hard drive.

Recently I have had 2 guys from within the creative community I manage yell out in frustration over hdd crashes, the first guy is a geek and knows about so many tricks in the book but none worked for him, no combination of software worked for him when his hdd crashed, although eventually he said he managed to salvage it with another software - Stellar Phoenix recovery software, it wasn't a funny experience for him to say the least.

The second guy whose drive was 1tb large had no choice but to reformat his drive and that affected him a lot because he lost all the files, what he is doing now is to go back to ask friends he share a file or the other with and ask them if they to share with him in return since he lost everything.
The first geek guy tells me that after formatting it may be 'possible' to still recover files using the Stellar Phoenix or the EaseUs.

So yeah... earlier on I mentioned the 'contagious disease', its the one that most people have, its the failure to make backups. Is this familiar? I bet you are saying oh yeah that's me he is talking about, well, I am sure it not only you. Backing up your data from your hard drive is such a priceless priceless practice which would save you from crying over and over again because you lost your sensitive data to a  once in a lifetime or unexpected hdd crash.

Serioulsy guys, why would a person not back up his data, data is money in digital form, you back up your worth and value in the bank in form of money, stock or government bonds, gold stock, asset insurance etc, you know I have always been a finance guy but that was long ago (I am quite thankful that experience though 'cos it helps me manage and administer the right way)... so if we all find a way to preserve our values as such why then cant we realise the need for back ups as a way to preserve our worth and values in another way, especially fort he creative guys.

The best ways to handle these would be to backup issue would be to:

1- Use the simplest back up method available, either via your OS or a direct drag and drop into a bigger and more spacious drive.

2- Linux gives you a few back up options including the cloud backup and you could automate your backups aswell for instance once you power up your system or before shut down.

3- Some have suggested and actually do a backup of their backups and this is sure a fail safe method except there is some possible 'spiritual affliction', the chance of loosing both your back up and the back up you made of your back up is really remote.

4- Keep your backups away from your site, but not too impossible to reach quickly... ion case of house destruction of theft, keeping your backup away from your location would prevent loosing everything.

5- A very important part of this process is to actually DO the backup, especially when done manually... just do it like Nike, do the backups, don’t get stuck with an outdated backup.

We could go on and on about hard drive crashes but its pretty simple make updated backups of your data and files/documents and for creatives like me you don’t have to be told what needs your most attention.

Hope you don’t get caught again or at all. HDD crashes can be very disastrous for your business or projects.

Cheers all

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