Originally posted by fractal I'm also in the market for one of these and thinking about the WD My Passport. I'm a little concerned about the failure rate though.
If these things die/crash, is there any way to recover the backed up data?
There are services that will recover data from a failed hard drive, but sit down. The charges range from $300 to over $3000!
Hard Drive & RAID Data Recovery Services & Software by Disk Doctors is one with many local offices across the US (if you happen to be in the USA).
Sometimes, it is simply a software fix that allows them to recover the data. Sometimes, they have to take the disk drive into a clean room, remove the old platter(s) and place them into an identical enclosure with operating heads. And even then, depending on the damage done when heads physically hit the disk, some of the data may not be fully recoverable.
Our company found out about all this when Windows XP Service Pack 2 crashed hundreds of hard drives - dead.
So, don't skip on backup. 1TB drives are commonly available for around $100. Get two or three - it's the minimum it would cost to even attempt to recover data from a dead hard drive. Do your back-ups and you won't have to sweat the loss of data later.
By the way, does anyone have any favorite mirroring programs they want to share?