I do a lot of professional data recovery work for my clients. Sometimes data can be recovered from a failed drive, and sometimes it can’t. When I encounter a really horrible failure beyond my capabilities I will send it to Drive Savers. But there has been cases where even an industry leader like them can’t recover any of the data. It’s best to be prepared. So be sure to backup anything you would like to have. Because if you don’t, then it’s just a matter of time before you lose it forever.
There’s a lot of backup services out there. It’s hard to choose just one because everyone has different needs.
Here’s a list of backup solutions I have found to be useful:
Time Machine (Mac)
Rsync.net (Linux)
NT Backup (Windows)
Just remember to actually use the backup method you choose, and check to make sure it’s actually working every once in a while.