Thomas Hawk got burnt by a LaCie Big Disk external hard drive—let his experience be a lesson to you. While LaCie’s products may be a middling quality, hard disks, as built with modern manufacturing techniques, should be presumed to be disposable. There was a time not that long ago that a hard disk would last many years, but those days are almost certainly over. We’re not sure exactly what has changed, but there’s a reason that hard disk manufacturers don’t offer five year warranties anymore.

So learn from Thomas’s frustrations. When backing up important data to a hard drive, like two years worth of photos, always backup your backup. While the chances of two hard drives biting the dust at the same time are much higher than you’d think, you’ll at least have a fighting chance of retaining your information.

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