Why backup data?The average failure rate of disk and tape drives is 100%!
What?
Yes, all drives eventually fail. Whether it happens during your ownership of it or not is not part of the equation.
Here's the facts about data loss.
Data loss is caused around:
44% of the time by hardware or system malfunction
32% of the time by human error
14% of the time by software corruption or program malfunction
7% of the time by computer viruses, trojans or malware
3% of the time by natural disasters
I've seen servers run for as long as 5 years non-stop and when it then needed to be restarted after doing some minor updates the drive would fail. Other times I've taken a brand new computer out of the box and had a hard drive fail.
Your computer data is one of your most precious assets. Unfortunately a lot of folks overlook that fact. For the home user who's spent hours upon hours collecting recipes, music, genealogy data, maintaining bank accounts, homework, etc, the impact of losing all of that work can seem overwhelming.
For the business that is dependent on tracking customers, orders, inventory, accounting, taxes, budgets, business plans, etc, the loss of that data is devastating. It can mean the end of that business.
There's probably not a computer user that doesn't know they should back up their data but how many actually take the time to do it? It takes time and discipline to follow a regular backup schedule. And it's very easy to tell yourself that nothing bad is going to happen, isn't it?
No one expects to be caught in the middle of a hurricane like Katrina
or to be struck by a tornado
or to have a computer stolen
or be inundated by a flood
or suffer from a fire
or lose electricity
But calamity happens. So the watchword as a computer user is:
Expect the unexpected, backup your data early and often.
Whether your computer is for home or business use have a backup strategy in place to save and protect your data.
A backup strategy is not something that has to be time consuming or hard. In fact once your backup strategy is in place it can run mostly unattended with some simple checks in place to make sure all is working correctly.
So what are your data backup options?
Well, you can do nothing and hope for the best? If the computer fails with your data locked inside it is sometimes possible to recover the data byte by byte by sending the hard drive to a data recovery specialist. The problem with that strategy is that it takes a very long time, there are no guarantees that any data will be recoverable and it's very expensive. When I say expensive it's going to be on the order of $1000 just to get started. Ouch! That's a very steep price to pay for something that is so easily avoidable. And that's also something your business insurance company is going to take a dim view of. What? Yes, especially if your business relies on access to that data. In fact there are business insurance companies that now offer discounts on your insurance when you have a solid business continuity and data recovery plan in place. Check with your business insurance agent. It might be well worth spending a little time to find you can save dollars on your coverage.
But wait! You say you have a warranty from the computer or hard drive manufacturer? Read the warranty or guarantee. Yes, they'll replace the drive and in some cases they may help you reload the operating system but there is no coverage for the data that was on your old hard drive and is now lost.