Over many years industrial electronics/automation was my career.
Backing up was the norm. Most people don't. I hate USB sticks. Many don't even realize that simply pulling one from a pc can corrupt them. Without a proper eject command.
Anyway. I have cables in my tech stash. And recovery software.
In many cases throwing a going-bad hard drive in a baggie and freezing it, and while in the freezer, performing a bit copy. Sometimes you get it all back, other times just some, and occasionally forget about it.
I had several cloned, partitoned drives in my locker at work for mission critical machinery. Hitachi was the worst! Fixes were in hours vs order another computer and spend hours reconfiguring, updating software and all of that crap.
As drive storage gets bigger (2,4,and up tb)...it scares me. But then again most people don't understand D:,E:,G:...etc. They want that C:.
A 4tb drive going south is big trouble. Those that know, know.
But I do believe DVR/Receivers that have no spin on startup enabled will last tons longer than one that spins forever.
I've read posts upon gutting my first DVR to grab the drive of people putting in a newer, larger one and getting an invalid drive message.
And when they enabled PUIS using HDAT2, all was good. I'm sure times have changed. But that's my 3 cents worth.
