This policy ensures that. if I missed backing up any of the client's data, I will have the original drive available to recover whatever information I didn't find initially.

My previous post was about the devastating effects that occurred when I went against that policy a short while back.  This one is about the exact opposite.

I got a call early this morning from a very good client.  She got back late last night from a business trip, and this morning she began looking at the data on the PC and discovered that over 2000 songs were missing from iTunes.  In her case, the PC already had two drives in it before rebuilding, so I labelled the oldest drive as hers (with the date I removed it from the PC) and archived it in my office.  That's where all the music is.

Her music library is very important to her and this was a "huge problem".  She was very distraught when she called.

I assured her that we still had all the music, and I will go back to her home on Tuesday next week to put it on the D:\ drive and link it to iTunes.  In addition, I will set her up with online backups so the data is doubly protected.  She sounded pretty relieved on the phone.

This is why I do this work, to be there for people who cannot take care of their computers themselves (for whatever reasons) and make sure the stuff they create and collect doesn't just disappear.  It's so easy to lose everything when a computer goes south.  I want to make sure that I do everything I can to prevent that from happening.