What Shall I Do If My Entire Hard Drive or Computer Crashes?

If you haven’t backed up your data – hit your head against a wall – and read how to choose an online backup service.

If you have backed up your data either with a backup software on an external hard drive or an online backup service (which I both highly recommend) then it is time to hit the restore button of your provider’s software.

What To Do if An Entire Hard Drive Crashes

Basically, if you entire computer dies and you need everything backup and running again you might want to look if your online backup service has an offline restore option (sometimes called restore-to-door) .

That way your entire data set is packed on an external hard drive and shipped to your door. Of course, this service is not free, so depending on how much data you have, be prepared to pay at least $150 for this extra speed. 

If you can wait, you should use your vendor’s software to restore all of your files. That is cheaper, yet can take a long time depending various factors such as how much data you have to restore, your Internet connection, the vendor’s servers and your computer.

Conclusion

Generally, if you only need to restore a few files to finish an important project it is advisable to use the web restore function that you can access anywhere without having to install additional software. 

Got any heart breaking stories about hard drive crashes to share? Feel free to talk about them and what you’ve learned since then in the comments section below.