Fixing Mint 22.3

[Mike-BTU]

External drives die, just like all drives die. Every read and write cycle means a tick of the timer. Each time it is powered on, it is yet another tick of the timer. It can, and will, eventually fail.

Being stored externally is nice and all, but it's inadequate if you want to prevent data loss. That's just the first of three fairly important steps. Also, it's important to test backups. An untested backup is not a backup. You need to be reasonably certain that you can restore your data from said backups.

Aannnd, have more than one backup. At least one backup drive that I had —plugged into the computer— died at the same time as the main HD.

Bad power supply fried them both simultaneously. And also, at the same time.

Lots of folks have their lost data stories.

 

[KGIII]

Aannnd, have more than one backup.

I'm a strong proponent of the 3, 2, 1 method. (The link shared in the comment goes into details.)

The idea is not mine, at least by name. It has been my practice for a long time.

A long, long time ago...

I brought some expensive data home from work. A tree in the yard was hit by lightning. Almost all of my magnetic storage (even those not plugged in or turned on, such as floppy disks) was corrupted. A goodly amount of that storage media no longer functioned properly.

My presumption is that there was a very large amount of EMR associated with the lightning.

Either way, I lost months of work, and not just my own time went into that work. It was very expensive data.

Some could be recovered from data still at the office, but the rest had to be redone. Fortunately, it was easier and faster the second time around. Still, the time and money lost turned into a very valuable lesson.

Needless to say, I've never lost significant data ever since then. Some policies at work were also altered to make sure that never happened again. One of the bigger changes was setting things up so that work could realistically be done remotely. Various steps were changed to ensure there was greater redundancy. It was a costly lesson, but a lesson well-learned.