Do you guys plug your external hard drives into surge protectors? I know some people who don't even plug their portable laptops into surge protectors because they think it's completely different from a desktop computer. Using that logic, there has to be some people who don't bother to protect their external hard drives from spikes.

I back up all my important files on an external drive along with DVDs that I keep at my brother's place. I don't want to be totally fucked if there's a fire or burglary at my place.

I don't have a DVD-ROM but I back up all of my crucial mp3 files onto CD-R's every few months or so. Usually I can fit about 10-12 albums worth of mp3's on them and thus free up some hard drive space.


If those discs crap out on me though I'm going to cry.

That's more or less what I do as well. I occasionally re-back up those cds as I just can't afford an external HD. Precious pron and mp3s on about 300 cd-rs.

sorry for your loss dalen, especially those metal discogs of maiden and ratt. I think I've got Out of the Cellar around here somewhere if you're interested.

i don't get it, why does it cost so much to recover files that are already in the hard drive? And even so, why doesn't the company who makes the hard drives make them so when they do crash, the files are in a cheaper position?

hard drives are incredibly delicate pieces of equipment that consist of a sensitive arm hovering a tiny fraction of an inch over a metal plate with a special magnetic coating, in a vacuum. if the arm touches the plate (a "head crash"), the coating is destroyed in that area, and the arm will continue to drag across a larger surface if you attempt to use the drive. so you have to open the casing of the drive in a dust-free magnetism-free environment and attempt to read the data using special equipment. making them easier to recover would probably make them much (much) more expensive to build.

appreciate that man. i'm in better shape than i thought. found discog torrents for ratt/sabbath/maiden/boston last night..getting them now.

fair enough, but i still don't see why they need to charge several grand to find some files...