How Safe is the Data on YOUR Hard Disk?by Gord Varney |
At one time or another, we have all read advertisements or articles that warn us that it's not [a question of] if our computer's hard disk will crash, but when. But, like most of you, I usually skip over these ditties when I realize what they are. (Before you presume that I am now writing a similar ditty and flit off to another article, bear with me -- I have a different message.) I have had one hard disk fail, and recently a colleague inadvertently reformatted my archive disk (a removable hard disk). In both cases, I was able to recover about two-thirds of my files using a recovery application (I used SUM -- Symantec Utilities for the Macintosh, but there are several available).
I would like to make two suggestions that will increase your rate of success at retrieving 'lost' files.
As a technical writer with above average organizational skill, you likely already keep your files in nice little subdirectories in logical little groups -- User's Guide illustrations here, research notes there, stuff for the service manual over yonder. But what if, in an instant, your files were all taken out of their subdirectories and put in one big directory? Could you distinguish one file from the other without opening them up? You can only assume that files with identical names disappeared.
This is what I faced after recovering my files. The archive was the worst. Most of my archived files used the same file names (Preface, Section 1, Table 3, next version notes, Figure 12, and so on), each residing in a subdirectory that identified the client, project, document, and file type. Now, I make sure every title name incorporates some simple, short code that identifies at least the project or client (which is often the name of the subdirectory where the file normally resides) as well as a descriptive name of the contents of the file.
File fragmentation is a normal part of life for a hard disk. Computers can rarely store an entire file in one sequential location on the hard disk. Rather, they start saving the file in one location, run out of room, move to another location, and so on until all of the data is written to the disk. The result is a file spread all over your hard disk -- a fragmented file.
After one week's normal processing, about ten percent of the files on my hard disk have one fragment or more. While technically there is nothing wrong -- the computer understands and expects some fragmentation -- it can slow your computer down a bit. It can also reduce your chances for file recovery.
During file recovery, the recovery software starts at the beginning of the disk and reads through sequentially to the end, looking for files (but not directories). If your file is all in one piece (no fragmentation), your chances of getting it back are high. On the other hand...if you're just finished and an unbacked up resume file is spread out in a million pieces over an 8O Mb drive, you might as well start typing it again.
Oh, and don't forget -- you should back up your archive as well as your current files. I wish I had.
Gord Varney is Director of the Centre for Professional Writing and the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.