Leo details yet another heartbreaking story of data loss – and the lack of back up.–PC Pitstop.
Another Heart Breaking Data Loss
By Leo Notenboom
Last week I posted this on Facebook:
Just had to break the news to a friend that the photos on the hard drive that failed – the contents of which we WERE able to recover thanks to some hard disk utilities – turned out to be encrypted by ransomware (CryptoWall), and we had no way to decrypt them. And no, they didn’t have a recent backup. (And yes, there were some VERY important photos on there. I’m hoping that they’ll recover some at least from friends and family with whom they shared ‘em.)
This is why, folks. This is why I harp and harp and harp on backing up. Seriously. Sh*t happens. Sometimes its benign, and sometimes its downright heartbreaking. PLEASE back up.
I want to go into that in just a little more detail, and expand on how this could have all been very close to a non-event.
I want to go into that in just a little more detail, and expand on how this could have all been very close to a non-event.
•
Hard drive failure
The call I got was from a friend. He was at a local office supply store’s computer service desk, a tad befuddled at the terms, and dollar amounts, the technicians were throwing at him.
The situation turned out to be this:
•The hard drive had some kind of physical failure – probably a bad sector or area.
•The technicians had installed a replacement hard drive into my friend’s computer.
•The technicians were unable to backup the faulty drive with their normal tools.
•The faulty drive contained important information that my friend wanted to recover.
•The next step for this particular computer service organization was to send it out to data recovery, with costs quoted from $200 to $1600.
My friend’s question was simple: did he need this, or was he being taken for a ride. He put the technician on the phone.
The bottom line was that, no, he probably wasn’t being taken for a ride, and that yes, the situation was serious. They’d just gone beyond what the in-store technician could do, hence the need to send it out.
He brought the machine to me instead.
