We're all guilty of it. Every single one of us. Ok, so perhaps I'm exaggerating here, but if you're reading this Entry, then I bet 99.9999999% of you are guilty. Admit it. No, I'm not referring to the fact that you don't floss your teeth on a daily basis even though you're supposed to and you tell your dentist otherwise. No, I'm not referring to the fact that you don't eat your five, or eight, or twelve servings of fruits and vegetables every day. I'm not even referring to how you're supposed to call your mother every single week and tell her that you love her. Ok, so these are things we are all supposed to do, and yet we don't do them as often as we should. And we're all guilty. But that's not what I'm referring to.

What I'm referring to, of course, is data backups. Yes, we're all supposed to back up on a monthly, even weekly basis. But do we? No, of course not. Why? Because we never think It Could Happen to Us (TM). It, in this case, is referring to the dreaded Hard Drive Crash (TM). Feared more than the stock market crash of the 1920s, more dreaded than getting involved in a car crash, the HDC will cause you great frustration and anguish, trust me on this.

We hear of it occurring countless numbers of times to other people. Yet we convince ourselves we're somehow invincible. My data is safe. I'll back it up tomorrow. There's nothing really important anyway. Of course tomorrow turns into another tomorrow, and then another, and then before you know it, months and months have passed. And yet we're still lazy and keep procrastinating backing up our data. I don't care what kind of computer you have - Apple, PC, PDA, laptop, linux, Lindows, your own proprietary system that you built with self-programmed O/S, the bottom line is that hard drives are delicate pieces of equipment which can and will fail - eventually.

Of course when we say, "it happens to everyone else but me," we're the 'everyone else' to someone else. No? Perhaps this personal collection of anecdotal evidence will convince you otherwise.

Myth #1: There's no way I'll boot up my computer and get some error message, leaving me with just my operating system and nothing else.

This happened to both my father and my father-in-law. And in both cases, they simply went ahead and reformatted their hard drives because their computers wouldn't boot up properly. Of course they didn't call me until after they had done this rendering data recovery almost impossible.

Myth #2: I think I know what I'm doing in upgrading my computer, at least it makes sense to me.

I've had numerous numbers of acquaintances who think they understand what they're doing, then end up futzing up their computer in one way or another.

a. Installing AOL 6.0 (ca. 2001) on a Pentium-120 Windows 3.1 machine (ca. 1993) is probably not the best idea - can you say compatibility issues? The ironic thing with that incident was that they already had internet access to begin with so they didn't really *need* AOL. AOL was installed b/c it was "free." And the truly ironic thing is that they had another computer that was quite new, and which AOL would have been compatible with. End result? All of the sudden, Internet Explorer refused to work. Gee - I wonder why.

b. Installing xxx MB of RAM, but the computer is only showing me xxx MB of RAM. What happened to the extra RAM that was put in? Oh wait, it's there somewhere, it's just being eaten up by my devices somewhere. I'll just go in & start disabling things until I figure out where the extra RAM is. End result: computer that would not boot up.

c. What? Your computer doesn't recognize your ISA modem (same previously mentioned P-120 machine). Just install Windows XP on your 500MB hard drive and that should take care of the problem. Fortunately I cut this one to the chase and prevented it from ever happening.

Myth #3: My computer is my baby - I researched it before I had it put together, it's overclocked and running optimally, nothing will happen to it. There's no way a psycho family member will beat the hell out of it.

Yes, this actually happened to a friend of mine. There's no actual proof that the family member actually did something to the computer, but witnesses say they heard a very loud "foot hitting metal" sound coming from the computer room, and when investigated, the suspect denied hearing anything. Computer owner was not home at the time. But not surprisingly enough, the computer failed to boot shortly thereafter, and when it finally booted, all directories on the hard drive were in ASCII.

Myth #4: "xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx error" - it will never happen to me.

See Unplugged from FootNotes for the most recent occurence.

Myth #5: Aren't CD-burners expensive? I'm not a computer guru, there's no way I could install one.

People always seem surprised when I tell them that burners cost less than $50. To set the record straight, CD-burners aren't that expensive anymore. You could easily pick one up for less than $50. And you can get CD-Rs (recordable CDs) for dirt cheap as well (50 CD-Rs for <$10).

Myth #6: So my hard drive crashed/there's nothing left/my directories are there but it's in gobbety-gook/my data is gone, right?

Actually, until you actually reformat and re-write stuff over what's already there, there's a good chance your data can still be retrieved by data recovery services. As long as you don't overwrite your hard drive (this includes reinstalling your O/S, copying new files onto your HD, etc), your data should still be there. And depending on how valuable your data is, you may want to pay their recovery fee to get your data back. It may not be cheap, but that's the price you pay for not backing up your data in the first place. But many people aren't aware that these services are available. Their hard drive crashes, they assume their data is gone, they curse and moan and cry, then they go ahead and reinstall everything from scratch. Go ahead and do everything up to the curse and moan and cry part - but don't reformat or copy or do anything to your hard drive until you determine if you want to TRY to get your data back.

People have a myriad of excuses and reasons for not keeping up with their data backups. But there is no good reason anymore for not having backups. So go buy that burner you've been meaning to get, get out that CD-R, do a backup NOW. Before it's too late. After all, you can get away with not flossing daily. You can get away with not eating your daily recommended servings of fruits & veggies. However, you cannot get away with not backing up your data.

[Author's note: I know I'm just inviting the Fates to smite my hard drive by writing this entry. But I did at least have the sense to back up my data before I wrote this.]