How to recover files from a damaged medium?

[DerGillster]

Okay, so I am a fan of using external hard drives and thumb drives over cloud storage. I just find them safer, faster and more convenient to use, especially when the internet is out and I need to get some file.

However, I do worry what will happen if a medium has been damaged or near the end of its lifespan. How long do external drives last up to? My computer repair instructor has a 250GB external drive that he has kept in his class for six years. If the medium is damaged, how far to the point of it's damage can the files be recovered?

 

[nukemaster]

No 2 hard drives last the same time. Flash drives tend to be fine as long as they are used from time to time. After a long time, they may start to loose data(even if the drive is still perfectly fine to use. It is a downside to nand flash used in these devices.)

Your best bet is to have more than one copy of the same thing.

So lets say a copy on the computer and a second copy on an external drive is a good idea(Keep the external off when not running backups.).

For stuff you really do not want to loose get yet another drive to make a 3rd copy. Consider keeping this copy at another location if you can. A fire can take out all the backups if they are in the same location. That is one of the advantages of cloud based storage. They tend to have redundancy to avoid loosing anything(or at least they should).

Always keep an eye on drive health with a tool like CrystalDiskInfo to ensure the drive is not getting bad sectors as that is a warning of upcoming failure.