Hardware Failure and Data Loss Prevention

Events that can cause data loss are, intentional deletion of a file or program, accidental deletion of a file or program, misplacement of CDs or floppies and system administrative errors. Data loss can also occur due to, power failure, head crash in a hard disk, software crash, filesystem or database corruption. Other factors are, natural causes like earthquake, flood, tornado, etc., fire, and malicious acts, such as a worm, virus, hacking, theft of physical media , sabotage, etc. Studies have shown hardware failure and human error to be the two most common causes of data loss. Although the probability is small, the only way to recover from data loss due to a natural disaster is to store backup data in a physically separate location. The cost of a data loss event is directly proportional to the value of the data and the length of time of unavailability when required, and should never be underestimated.
Though data loss can never be prevented totally, frequency of data loss events and their impact can be greatly minimized by taking proper precautions. Multiple power circuits with battery backup and a generator, using a journaling filesystem and RAID storage, maintaining antivirus protection and network firewalls, updating the system with all published security fixes and system patches will guard against some of the failures. Filesystem corruption can frequently be repaired by the user or the system administrator with proper software tools. A deleted file in most cases can be recovered.
Data loss due to hardware failure can never be foreseen and forestalled. There are commercial services that attempt to recover data from physically damaged media. Their charges vary according to the type of damage and type of storage drive.
Successful recovery from a data loss event generally requires an effective backup strategy. One of the most effective backup strategies is to have online backup. It runs on a client computer as a service and is based on a set of schedule or it can be run manually by the users from that computer. It can backup all your files and overwrite your existing ones or only those modified. It is based on a client server architecture, meaning that there is a server process which runs on the server and its main task is to store your files on the server. Online data backup service has given security and insurance for the user and has helped many people/companies protect their most important assets against hardware failures and natural calamities.

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