Many people don’t realize that data protection is essentially until they lose their crucial data. Hard drive recovery can be an expensive and time-consuming undertaking, if the failure is catastrophic enough. It is important for people to protect their data from data corruption and loss whenever possible. However, many people have wrong assumption when it comes to data backup and protection. As an example, many people think that they hard drives are new, so their data is completely safe. In reality, hard drives are like other electronic devices. They could still fail when still relatively new. Many people have returned DVD player, coffee maker and toaster.
Something that’s completely new can still break and that’s the reason we have warranties. Hard drives are not different. We should be aware that hard drives could be replaced, but vendors and manufacturers won’t guarantee the integrity of our data. Data problem is our problem, not manufacturer’s problem. When our hard drive fails, we will only see a blank screen, a loud clicking noise or multiple error messages. Our hearts sink and we realize that things will be much harder from now on. Hard drive manufacturers never guarantee that their products would last forever and it means that our data will be gone one day.
Another misconception is that when we back up our data to other media, such as a spare HDD, our data is fully protected. Now that we have patted ourselves on the back for doing that, we should also consider that HDD won’t last forever. It is important to test our backup to make sure that it’s still working. The data stored should still be relevant to us and our business. When we lose our data in our primary storage unit, we should make sure that our back up unit is still working perfectly. For many businesses, losing a few days worth of data can be quite disastrous.
For some companies, data loss could cost the millions of dollars and many customers. RAID is a storage concept that combines multiple physical hard drives into a single large, logical one. It offers higher performance and redundancy against data loss. However, many people wrongly rely too much on their RAID system. They may even neglect having a backup system, because they think that file duplicates in the RAID system is enough for them. Although it’s true to certain extent, we should know that multiple hard disk failures in a RAID system could happen and it did happen.
Sudden power surge, flood and various natural disasters could damage our computer units. More static back up platforms, such as DVD and Blu-ray are more durable against exposure to water and they are disconnected from electricity and the Internet when not being used. Virus and malware could destroy the entire RAID array causing irrecoverable data. There are many things that could still go wrong and it is important for us to have the proper plan to improve our situations. We should take extra time to evaluate our situation and employ the right data protection technique.