THE GOODS : Preparing for Digital Disaster

My hard drive died last week.

Knowing this would likely happen one day, I had long ago prepared by backing up my files, organizing my software and taking note of information I would need to reconnect to online services.

Right. And I floss after every meal.

The truth is, few of us are adequately prepared for that sickening instant--which can come without warning--when our home computer hard drives go south. You can try to reboot, use your floppy drive to get the operating system re-established or try one of several repair software packages available.

Sometimes these measures work and you get off with just a warning. But in many cases your only recourse is to stare blankly at your blank screen with the sickening realization that financial records, correspondence, address book, the start of the Great American Novel and your kid’s geography project have all vanished into digital netherspace.

Because hard drives are mechanical devices, they can’t be expected to run perfectly forever, just as you can’t expect your car engine to never need maintenance. You could get lucky or you could end up like me last week.

Hard drives used to break down with more regularity. “Five years ago it was a lot more common,” said Richard Green, a marketing director for SyQuest Technology, a leading manufacturer of hard drives. Technology now used is less likely to scratch the hard drive and thus destroy data. “But things can still happen,” Green warned.

A computer repair shop might be able to retrieve some or all of the lost information, but it will cost you money and time, and in some cases it will be able to get back nothing at all.

Preparing for this potential digital disaster is a bore, and unless you’re working on the solution for cold fusion and consider every iota of information in your computer sacred, you need not take heroic measures to preserve everything on your hard drive. If you concentrate on just the stuff you absolutely need and spend a little time in preparation, you can save yourself a lot of headaches and cash in the wake of a hard-drive failure.

Here are a few suggestions:

* Software programs: Unless the software you are using was installed illegally and you no longer have access to the original, you can easily reinstall it after a failure. Providing you can easily lay your hands on the disks.

Take some time one evening to find all the original disks you used to install your word processing, modem, financial and other vital programs. Buy one of those inexpensive, plastic floppy disk trays to store them.

For an extra measure of safety, make copies of your originals and put them in another location, such as your place of work. That way, if the reason your hard drive fails is that your computer was destroyed in an earthquake or fire, you won’t have to buy new software.

Finally, it’s a good idea to write down the serial numbers of the software you use. You may need to enter them during a reinstall.

* Backing up files: Identify the files that are truly important--word-processing documents, your financial program’s data files, your address book entries, etcetera--and download them to floppies at least once a month (or even daily if you’re working on something as unreconstructable as a book). If you want to get a bit more fancy, you can invest in an external drive that allows you to download large amounts of information on a removable tape cartridge. SyQuest makes a model that costs about $240, plus about $20 per cartridge.

Again, for more safety, toss the floppy back-ups or cartridges into your briefcase or backpack to take to another location.

* Online services: Write down on index cards or in a little notebook the access numbers you use to enter such services as America Online, CompuServe and local bulletin boards. Also, write down your passwords (and prepare to put your notes in a safe place, unless you want someone signing on in your name).

If you use a separate Internet service, write down the many codes you’ll need to hook back into its e-mail, newsgroups and other services.

And that’s it. These simple steps might require a couple hours of preparation at first, but then you need do only a few minutes of maintenance per week.

I only wish I had read this column a couple weeks ago.

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Cyburbia’s Internet address is Colker@news.latimes.com.