Proving A Point

A little while ago I wrote an article on backing up. Today a friend contacted me and her harddrive had failed. (BTW it was a Maxtor hard drive - if you can completely avoid this junk). She drove the PC over to my house, and we checked it out... unfortunately the HDDwas making a "clicking" sound and would not boot. I did try putting it in an external firewire container I have, and also hooking it up as a second drive in my PC but no luck. She and her husband have just lost all there data. I feel terrible for them as I can imaging how this is. Photos, addresses, Resumes, everything...

So let me say again. BUY EXTERNAL STORAGE AND BACK YOUR IMPORTANT STUFF UP. (CD-roms and DVD-Roms are acceptable too). Have some form of backup solution please. You will save yourself a lot of pain.