If you’re a small business owner or an office manager in a medium sized business, you probably worry about the safety of your business data. For home computer users today, data safety is a concern, because so many people keep their important information and documents on computer drives. For businesses, the security of data and plans for data recovery are even more critical. Those who specialize in data recovery in New Jersey will testify to the disruption a business suffers when hard drives fail. It’s a scenario they see on a regular basis.
If you have business responsibility, it’s wise to adopt the viewpoint that at some point, a hard drive will fail. There is no room in business for an “if” scenario. Here are four facts about business data loss.
1) Every week, 140,000 hard drives crash in the US alone.
2) Data loss catastrophies cost the average company more than $100,000 per year.
3) 60% of companies who experience data loss end up closing down as a result.
4) Almost 70% of data losses result from human error.
How to Avoid Business Data Recovery Scenarios
With careful planning it’s completely possible for any New Jersey business to prevent the loss of data. While data recovery services in NJ will be happy to help you try and retrieve lost data, prevention is always better than cure. To avoid ending up in a data loss situation, apply the following prevention measures in your business:
Back up the data on your hard drives every day
Keep your computers away from vibration and heat wherever possible
Run scandisk every two to three weeks (on Windows computers)
Defragment your hard drives periodically. (Data recovery succeeds more often on clustered files)
Ensure your antivirus software is configured to update automatically
A full back-up of your computer or network server should be performed occasionally, while partial back-ups should happen regularly to ensure all new data is archived.
Business Data Backup Media
Depending on the size of your business and the amount of data you back up daily, you can choose from a range of storage devices. If your data volume is not too high, you can back up to CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray disks. Flash drives are also a good backup storage solution for smaller amounts of data. For higher volumes you should use external hard drives.
RAID devices are another form of data archiving media popular with businesses. RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. A RAID is basically a number of hard disks packaged into a single drive unit. They come in many formats and some are more useful than others for business data backup. A good RAID device can keep your data very safe, because if a drive in the array fails, your data is archived on another disk in the unit. If you make use of RAID storage and are not sure about the recovery process. You can get advice from an expert in RAID data recovery in NJ, or wherever else your business may be located.
Protect and Check Your Backed Up Data
Backing up your data on a daily basis will help you avoid data recovery situations, but there are still further steps you should take to secure the archived data. After you complete a backup, test that it has actually worked by running a data restore process. If successful, the backed up files will be returned to their original locations. Keep copies of your backups in a separate location from your business, to protect them in case of a fire at work or similar disaster. Fires are a regular cause of data loss and many businesses have been unable to recover because all their data was destroyed. This can be avoided if data backups are kept elsewhere.
How to Prepare for Data Recovery
If the worst should happen and you have a crashed hard drive with vital data on it, you will need professional help. You might use a local professional to help get your data back. Most towns in New Jersey have data recovery services. It’s possible though, that you have an agreement with a data recovery service outside of your immediate locality. In that case, you will need to ship the failed drive out to the computer repair or data recovery experts.
If you do have to package your hard drive to ship it out, there are a few precautions you should take, to prevent your drive from suffering further damage. You should take special care over the packaging and follow these tips:
Wrap the disk drive in a freezer bag or anti-static material
Use plenty of bubble wrap to protect the drive against vibration
Avoid Styrofoam pellets as they are susceptible to static electricity which is very bad for hard drives
Make sure the drive is protected by a good 2” of padding material
Ship the drive in a strong, corrugated cardboard box, twice the size of your hard drive
These same precautions should be taken with any storage media, in the event that you are sending it for data recovery.
If your hard drive has been water-damaged, which can happen if your business is in a basement and gets flooded, there are some extra rules to follow.
1) Do not use any method to try and dry your hard drive, leave it wet.
2) Use damp sponges to wrap your drive in and seal the whole lot in a plastic bag.
There is a very good reason for these two steps. Data recovery technicians have a greater chance of saving your files if the drive hasn’t dried out when they receive it.
In Summary
You know your business data is important, so implementing a good back up strategy is something to do right away. If you already have a strategy in place, it’s worth reviewing it against the points above. You may find a way to strengthen your data safety. If you are in New Jersey and have some questions about backup and data recovery plans, Dave’s Computers would love to help. Helpful team members are waiting to take your call on 908-428-9558.
by David Molnar
