Laptop Data Recovery Protects Your Important Information

The proliferation of laptops has brought the subject of hard drive data recovery back into the conversation for personal and business computers. Face it – your company’s desktop systems are tied into the network at all times. As long as you’ve set up a regular data backup and recovery system to run on your network, you can be fairly comfortably assured that the data stored on your desktop systems is essentially safe. That is – if the data on your company’s desktop systems is compromised, you’ll have backups to do restoration and get everything back up to full efficiency fairly quickly.

Your laptops, on the other hand, aren’t quite so easy to secure. In fact, every laptop you issue to employees represents a serious data loss risk for a number of reasons.

Because the laptops aren’t always connected to the network when your system is running backups, you’re far less likely to have a recent backup to use for data recovery if something compromises a laptop system.

If your employees travel with their laptops and use them in unsecured locations – airports, coffee shops and even hotel rooms – they’re more prone to hacking and software invasion.

Laptops are far more prone to the one kind of data loss that requires professional data recovery services – physical damage to the hard drive. The convenience and ease of traveling with a laptop carries with it the increased risk of damage to the machine. Laptops are carried around in and out of their cases, bumped against walls and doors, rattled as they ride around in vehicles and knocked off desks, tables and counters. Anyone of those jars, bumps or knocks can cause actual physical damage to the hard drive which results in data loss and necessitates the services of a data recovery company like Fields Associates.

Preventive Measures

There are, of course, a number of things you can do to decrease the chances of compromised data, data loss, hard drive damage and the need for a data recovery company among your company’s laptop users.

Every laptop should include a data backup utility that’s set to automatically back up the entire hard drive – or selected essential files – to the company servers and to offsite backup media on a regular basis. Your IT department should check those backups regularly to ensure that they’re being completed and that they contain the essential data.

Invest in heavy duty protective laptop cases for your entire fleet and require that laptops be transported in those cases.

Train all of your laptop users in how to recognize the signs of impending data loss and physical hard drive failure, and instruct them to immediately stop using their laptops if they notice any of those signs.

The last of those points is vital because continuing to use a hard drive after it shows signs of physical damage or impending failure risks destroying important data. If those instructions are followed by your employees, you increase the chances that a data recovery company will be able to retrieve any essential data from failed laptops.

Is Data Recovery The Right Option?

How do you decide whether to call in a data recovery company? When your computer fails and you can’t access important data, it’s easy to panic. Before you freak out and think that all is lost, there are a number of things you can do. If these steps fail, you can call in a data recovery company, such as Fields Associates or Fields Data Recovery.

Check Your Backups

If you have a backup routine, the first thing to do is to check your tape or disk backups. Depending on the routine your company follows, you may simply be able to restore the entire backup – onto a new hard drive, if possible, of course. Look for the most recent backup of the information and keep in mind that your backup won’t contain any modifications or entries after the date of the backup.

Even if you don’t do regular backups, all is not lost. Many times the important information you need may be stored elsewhere on the network or on another hard drive. If you only need one or two important files, you may be able to find them that way.

Recreating the Lost Data

Is the lost data in files that can be recreated? If the files are relatively static, such as address databases, recreating the lost files may be a more affordable option than doing a full data recovery. Other files, however, could be impossible to recreate. If you’ve lost access to a database that registers dozens of transactions a minute – or even an hour – recreating the file from scratch is more than likely completely impossible. If the records are vital, sending the drive out to a data recovery company may be your only option.

Consider Legal Ramifications

In many businesses, your data may be necessary to comply with regulatory and legal requirements. In that case, data recovery may be your only viable option.

Choosing a Reliable Data Recovery Company

Choosing the right data recovery company is nearly as important as deciding whether or not you should opt to have your data recovered at all. It can be especially important if you need the data for regulatory purposes. The best way to ensure that you are dealing with a reliable data recovery firm like Fields Data Recovery is to do your homework in advance when you have the luxury of time to research the firm’s reliability. Once your hard drive has failed, you’re not likely to have the time to ask around and check a firm’s references before employing them.

Why Data Recovery Preparation Matters More Than Ever

In these days of automatic backups and inexpensive offsite storage – in the cloud and at other data centers – do you still really have to worry about finding the right data recovery company in case of emergency? We polled a number of IT specialists and received a single answer from the all – a resounding yes. Despite the fact that businesses are more aware than ever of the necessity for data security and doing regular backups, there’s always a chance that something will go wrong – and when it does, it often spells disaster.

What Could Go Wrong? How Companies Fail in Data Recovery Preparation

Even the most careful companies occasionally fail to cover something obvious, but by far the most common error that businesses make is the most basic one of all – failing to back up their data at all. We’ve all grown comfortable with the notion that the computer will always start up and the files will always be there. The more advanced the computer system, the more likely it is that the employees who use it never consider what might happen if an outage cut off their access to their data.

The data recovery stories that stand out, however, are those in which the company’s executive officers thought they’d covered everything – only to be undone by something – often something blindingly simple – that they’d overlooked. Even the best data recovery plans can fall apart when you make one of these basic mistakes.

Backing Up the Wrong Data

When the data server’s hard drive failed, the owner of one small company thought he had it covered. After all, he’d had his IT guy making nightly backups so he could do data restoration for just this kind of problem. Imagine his surprise when he ran the data recovery program and found that the recovery disks were missing the accounts receivable and projects databases – the two files most needed to continue operation without interruption.

Forgetting to Run the Backup Program

One small business made a significant investment in backup software that was designed to run nightly. The IT department surveyed the staff to figure out which files were most important and set up the scheduled backups according to order of importance. When a virus compromised the data on the network hard drive, the data team when into action – only to find that the data tech who’d set up the program had neglected to complete the final step in configuring the program. The backup program had never run, and the company had to call in a Fields Data Recovery team to try to resurrect their missing files.

Those are just two of the many things that can go wrong even when you think you’re doing everything right. It’s always best to identify a data recovery option in advance so you’re not caught unprepared when the unexpected disaster strikes.

Choosing the Right Data Recovery Company

The very worst time to choose a data recovery company is when you’re in the middle of a data loss emergency. When your accounting department can’t pull up the customer list and your company’s work has ground to a halt because scheduling and planning software isn’t functioning, the last thing you want to be doing is calling random data recovery companies and evaluating which is the best one to handle your emergency. When you’re up against a wall, you’re vulnerable to unrealistic claims and sales pitches because you have to make a decision quickly.

Unfortunately, sending your drives and data to the wrong data recovery company can result in the permanent loss of your vital records. If you’re pressed to make a quick decision because your situation has already reached the emergency level, look for these factors to help you evaluate a number of data recovery companies before making your choice.

Look for a company that has a clean room – a sterilized environment in which the technicians can safely open drives and work directly on your damaged media. Without clean room support, the data recovery company can’t safely perform any physical procedures that might be needed to get your data back.

The best companies should be able to work on any type of software operating system. Be wary of data recovery firms that only work on Windows-based systems or Mac systems only. The more conversant the company is with recovery options for all types of systems, the better the chances are that they really know what they’re doing.

Physical proximity makes life easier for everyone, but don’t rule out a data recovery company just because they’re not located in the same area code as yours. Most data recovery companies can provide you with detailed instructions on how to safely ship your media to them, and many provide the packaging to ensure that your devices travel safely.

Make sure that the data recovery company you’re working with has a full service laboratory as well as a clean room. Get recommendations from others who have used them, and be wary of any company that doesn’t list a physical address and telephone contact information. The data recovery field is littered with “companies” that are no more than an amateur working in his basement – not exactly someone you want to trust to handle your sensitive data.

The best way to avoid having to make a data recovery decision in a hurry is to do your research in advance and identify a data recovery firm like Fields Associates to handle any data loss emergencies that might happen in the future.