Disaster Recovery Plan Checklist Article
How to Save Yourself from Hard Drive Failure
Any computer user will tell you that losing data can be like losing a limb. This is especially true for people who use their computer for business purposes; storing information, calculations, and other business information. Losing all of that business information can be crippling.
Even if you're one of the few computer savvy people who actually backed up their data on external hard drives or CD's, you'll still need to make sure the backup system you've chosen actually works. There is nothing worse to your business than to backup important data from your computer, only to find out weeks later that it didn't quite go right.
It doesn't matter what industry you're in, or who you are for that matter, losing any amount of data from your computer can and will happen. Computers are incredible tools, but they are man made, therefore they aren't perfect. During any time in the life of your computer, the hard drive can become damaged, corrupted, or just malfunction. Despite the fact these bad things can happen, and you could lose precious data from your computer, you'd better thank your lucky stars that there is data recovery.
Data recovery is a process in which, once the hard drive has failed, you are still able to access and remove the data from a corrupted hard drive. Before this data can be recovered from your hard drive, he will need to take your computer to a technician who actually specializes in recovering data from dead hard drives. Once your computer is in the hands of the technician, he will most likely need to run some specific tests on the hard drive to see what is actually wrong with it; whether it's damaged, corrupted, or just fallen upon human error.
The actual data recovery process can take anywhere between two to three weeks. This time usually depends on what the actual problem is, the skill level of the technician, and whether or not parts need to be ordered. It is important at you keep in mind that the higher the skill level of the technician, and the amount of parts and the time put in to the recovery of your data can all lead to a higher expense than first estimated. For this reason, do not take all initial estimates at face value.
In order to ensure the data recovery is unnecessary, it is a very good idea to back up any important information on a CD or an external hard drive. You can store important business information on CD using a CD burner or a CD-R burner. This is, by far, the cheapest method of backing up your information, and is far less involved than installing and having to store an external hard drive.
Using a computer for your day to day business is a very handy and convenient tool, but common malfunctions and human error can be a very low blow to you and your company. If you backup all of your important information on a weekly basis, you're more likely to come out of any disaster unscathed.
