Do you have everything saved on your computer? Is all your data stored there and you have no system for back ups? Do you think that your computer will never crash? A lot of people have important data on their hard disks, but only a few of them are backing up their data from time to time. All it takes is one crash and you are out of luck. Sometimes you can get someone to recover the lost data, but that is not always possible. If you take anything away from this article, by the way, it is not meant to scare you...you should make sure you back up your computer at least once a month, or once a week if you use it frequently.

But, what should you do in the event that you do have a crash? Here is the quick survival guide for dealing with a computer crash when or if it should happen.

the first thing you have to do is immediately turn off your computer. Do not try to press alot of key commands to try to get things to come back, and don't try to keep turning it on and off. The more you try and put demands on the computer cpu, the more you run the risk of losing all the data. Your are best of just stopping where you are at.

When you send your hard disk to a data recovery company they start their diagnosics. The problem may be logical ( or software related) or it could be physical (hardware related).

If the problem is logical it won't cost so much to recover your data and it will also take less time than a physical problem. In case of a logical problem, the hard drive should be still recognized by your BIOS. The kinds of things that affect the logics of the computer have to do with software. You could have a virus, or you could have lost a driver or file that causes the computer not to run smoothly. Diagnostics will find what problem, and either remove the virus, or re install the missing driver.

If the problem is physical, you will have to spend some money on the recovery. The damage can be mechanical or electronic. Many cases are caused by something like too much heat. If your fan breaks, or there is alot of dust build up around the fan, you can burn out components. In case of too much heat, the spindle motor might get badly damaged. To lower the chance of a hard drive crash you should make sure that your pc is properly ventilated. Fans are pretty cheap and easy to install. If the components of your pc are cooler, it will run much better and the chance of data loss is lower. You should encounter a few problems, like very annoying sounds before the spindle motor completely fails. If you start to hear funny sounds, by all means, immediately take your computer to get looked at. This is a way of giving you a heads up!

The problem with a menchanical or physical issues is that,depending on the damage created on the hard disk, the information may not be retrieveable.

In the event that you do run into a computer crash, try to have as much information as possible about the make, model, and system you have on your computer. They will need to know the kind of hard drvie you have, the processors, memory, etc. Make sure you have this information readily available.

The best time to find a good computer repair person is when you don't need one. Start looking now, and get references. You don't want to be looking when you computer is already broken.

Lastly, the best way to eliminate all of this is to start to back up you computer regularly. Depending on how much information you have, you can get affordable zip drives to store files, and even external hard drives too. From $30 to a few hundred, you can have piece of mind that should something happen, you are covered.