Consider, if your video card melts into the ground, you can go out, buy a new one and replace the old one. Done. Matter of fact, if every component in the computer where to explode at once, leaving the HDD intact, it would cost you only a thousand dollars to replace some of the best workstations. But if that 120GB HDD melts down, it could easily cost you $10,000+ to replace it.
"$10,000?!" you say, and I nod and say "Yes."
"But on WHAT?! The HDD is only worth $200 at MOST?!"
And this is where most people don't realize the actual value of their HDD. When they first bought the drive, yes, it was 150 bucks. Then they put 4 hours into it installing operating systems, productivity software, and their favorite video games. At a computer tech's cost ($60 an hour or so), you have already added 240 dollars to the value of your HDD. Now in a business environment (Assuming no backups) you might have all of the work you've done over the last 2 years on that HDD. Meaning that your employer (If you're a computer dependent employee like me) paid you two years salary to create and store that stuff on your HDD. Obviously, that's worth WAY more than $10,000, even if you're just a student intern like me. So the fact that a data recovery service charges a MERE $10,000 to recover the average hard drive is not such a discouraging idea.
Now, this is a purely frightening concept. $10,000 (+ parts, labor, and additional downtime ^^) just to replace a faulty HDD. There must be something that can reduce this, and there is. It goes by the humble name of Backup. Replacing an HDD when a backup is available takes the cost back to $150 plus 4 hours of labor, for a mere $390.
The important thing about backups is that they will not take the cost of HDD replacement to 0. In fact, backups will cause an increase in the basic operating cost of owning a computer by adding work and downtime that, if you're one of the chosen few, may never be used. However, the basics in backup cost theory state that when all of the costs of HDD replacement are accounted for, and all of the costs of backup procedures are added up, the backup comes up significantly cheaper, in the $1000 dollars per mean failure period range. This cost can also be greatly reduced by the use of centralized storage, RAID, and proper care and maintenance.
So here's what bothers me: in the home environment, loosing all of one's personal data just isn't that big of a deal. Replace the drive; spend the 4 hours reinstalling your apps; mourn the loss of your porn and stolen movie collection; and move on. But in the business world you HAVE to get that data back. Just letting it fall off into oblivion is unacceptable. So why the heck do so many small companies not have a serious (and implemented) backup plan? For example one of my friend's employers has no formal backup plan. So since he knows he'll be responsible for data recovery in the event of an HDD crash, he has instituted his own backup plan. But remember when I mentioned that the cost of backups can be reduced using centralized storage, RAID, and the like. Well all of those (except for care and maintenance) require the assistance of the employer. So basically the fact that he has to do his own backups means that it's costing his employer much more than it has to for him to keep his $50,000 worth of data safe.
*Sigh* When will they ever learn?
Mood: Dismayed