by Michael Kahny on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 at 11:22am

Had any computer problems lately? If you answered "no", then just wait a while and ask yourself that same question again, you will probably have a different answer.

Computer problems are a constant, even more so than taxes and death, if you ask me. I had to deal with two very similar problems lately and I thought I would give some insight on how they turned out.

The first case deals with a laptop computer that had it's hard drive fail. In a computer this is the most likely component to fail, followed closely by the power supply. Anyway, in this case, the laptop in question held a fair amount of important files that included digital photos that had not been printed out. This laptop had not been backed up … EVER! Needless to say lots of memories are gone forever with those photos. Not to mention the other files lost.

Fortunately there was not any (or very little) third party software loaded on the computer so replacing the hard drive, reloading the software that came with the computer, updating said software (which can be a time consuming process with a slow connection) and the computer was back in business … sans the important files and photos.

The second case deals with a laptop computer that had the hard drive fail. (Sound familiar?) But in this case the computer was backed up on a fairly regular basis. (Every couple of weeks.) Fortunately for this user a backup had been made just days before the crash. The solution was a little less traumatic. Instead of a new hard drive, though, because of other issues with this computer, and it's age, it made more sense to replace the entire laptop. The backup disk was reloaded onto the new laptop and all but a few emails were recovered.

Moral of this story? … BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER! And test the backups every so often. Your computer is going to fail … they all do, sooner or later.