Disaster Prevention
Hard drives rely on precision, high-speed mechanics and complex electronics. Any failure, however minor, can spell disaster.
Hard drives failure is rated in terms of Mean Time Before Failure, or MTBF. Drive manufacturers typically claim MTBFs in the order of hundred of thousands of hours. Usually this is extrapolated data (i.e. calculated or estimated). Drives sometimes have manufacturing defects that cause them to fail well before the mean time estimate.
The fact is that ALL hard drives will fail eventually. Some will give an early warning but most do not. The best way to avoid a disaster is to back up your data to multiple places, such as other hard drives or DVD/CD media.
The key is to back up your data regularly or automatically. Some software packages will back up a drive to an external device on a preset schedule.
Critical data should be backed up to more than one device, such as a separate hard drive and a DVD-R or CD-R drive
Data Savers, LLC sells hard drives, external drive enclosures, and software for hard drive back-up. Visit our Store to see our product line, which includes Seagate® brand hard drives.