Prevent Data Loss

How many of you have been in this situation?

Without any warning or notice your seemingly dependable and very trusted PC crashed. And with that, all the important files, folders, pictures and other important objects that you so diligently stored in it, are suddenly gone.

If we find ourselves in a situation like this we curse the fates, try to retrieve the data in any way we can (which is rarely 100% successful), we keep thinking of all the things we could have done to prevent it and regret not doing any of those things (should have thought before losing all the data).

  When we store things in our PC we scarcely think of the possibility that we might lose it. So when we do lose it, the most common situation is we don't have any back-up. And even if we think about back-up (most possibly because all the experts keep recommending it, or a notification keeps suggesting it) we are often too lazy to do anything or keep postponing it for later. That's what I did. I was stupid enough to think whatever I store in my PC will be always there. And I kept postponing creating a back-up because I thought it will take a lot of time. I told myself, I will do it when I have enough time. I mean, I have good anti-virus software and I am a very careful user. So what is the worst that can happen? Idiotic, right? I know. And I had to suffer for this idiocy by losing most of my pictures and documents.

I'd like to think that I gained at least something from this horrible experience. I now know the steps that I could have taken to prevent this disaster. So, I will share it. I hope it will help at least one person avoid this kind of loss.

So here is what I think should be done,

1. Create a back-up of your important files and folders. There are lots of free and paid "cloud back-up" services available. Even Google provides a "cloud back-up" service. Search the internet and choose according to your preferences.

2. You can also buy a separate hard-disk to back-up your important data.

3. If you don't want to buy a hard-disk you can buy some pen drives, memory cards, sd cards, CDs etc. and back-up your important data in them. If you use portable devices like this you should label them.

4. Always copy-paste, never ever cut-paste. There is a bigger possibility of a mishap & losing data in cut-paste then in copy-paste.

5. Try not to use CTRL D to delete things, instead delete normally by selecting delete option. If you use CTRL D it deletes completely. But when you delete using delete option it 1st goes to recycle bin. So if an accident happens you can always go to recycle bin and restore it.

6. There are many data recovery software, both free and paid. Choose a suitable one and install it. You might want to install it to a portable drive and use it from there. Because if something is deleted from the PC, then it is better not to use the PC too much, or else the data might become corrupt or irrecoverable. Even if somehow data like this is recovered it might be broken.

7. You can also keep your pictures in an album in your Google or Facebook account if you trust them. You can use privacy settings to control who can see it.