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.