Data recovery software: Most common data loss causes and how to prevent them

Ever since the invention of the personal computer the human race has moved further and further away from storing data in physical form and towards having everything available at the touch of a button via these computing devices, such as laptops and, more recently, mobile devices. This move towards online storage of information has both pros and cons as, in the majority of cases, if data is lost and/or destroyed it may be possible to recover the information, unlike when physically stored information is irreparably damaged.

However, unlike physical data, there are far more threats to the integrity of the computer based information and it is easier to lose data online so education in the ways of becoming aware of these risks is the way forward towards making the online option the safer of the two methods. In this article we take a look at the most common data loss causes and how to prevent them as well as reviewing data recovery steps should the worst happen and we need to recover deleted files.

Most Common Data Loss Causes:

1. Users:

The number one cause of data loss comes directly from users. A recent survey of more than 400 IT professionals found that almost one of every four data loss issues came as a direct result of human interaction with the data. This can manifest itself as the deletion or overwriting of files or programs, the loss of externally saved data – such as CDS and flash drives – and accidental damage, such as spilling liquids onto the machine or dropping a laptop and damaging the hard drive. All of these will result in users losing their data and being unable to restore from their machine. While there is little that can be done about accidental damage, educating users on how to ensure that information is not deleted or overwritten is the best way to secure vital information.

1. Hardware Failure:

21%, or just over one in every five, of data loss incidents are related to the user’s computer hardware experiencing a failure of some kind. The hard drive is the most fragile of all pieces used in computing and is the one piece that breaks most regularly, causing any data stored locally to be lost. In some cases there is the chance of data recovery from broken hard drives, although this is not guaranteed to work and can costs hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds, Euros or dollars as a professional service using data recovery software will need to complete the work. The cost of replacing aging hardware can also cause data loss issues for companies should their machines break due to age before being upgraded.

1. Data Corruption:

Sitting third on the recent survey, malicious corruption of data is becoming a larger issue for companies, as well as home users, around the world as ransomware, such as Cryptolocker, causes data to be corrupted and unable to be accessed without the paying of a ransom to the person or people that are spreading the virus. 19% of all data loss situations are caused by ransomware or other viruses. This is linked in with the users section as the optimal way of spreading ransomware is via malicious emails and, again, educating users on how to avoid these, and opening their dangerous attachments, is the best way of defeating the people who make a living from this type of criminal enterprise.

1. Other:

The final 36% of incidents in which data has been lost is a combination of theft, power failure and environmental – such as fire, explosions, civil unrest plus hurricanes/tornadoes and other storms – damage to local data centres. These all vary in severity between local data loss on machines that have been stolen or had data corrupted due to power failure during data transfer to critical if all data is stored on-site and is destroyed by storm damage.

How to secure data:

Whether data is lost deliberately or by accident the simple fact remains, if it has not been backed up then (apart from the case of hard drive failure without vast expense in both time and money) the data is irretrievably gone and no matter what data recovery software or other solutions you have available you are reacting to a situation rather than having a proactive approach to the security of your data. Being proactive about securing your vital personal and/or business information means ensuring that there is a data backup available to minimise the loss of this data as well as the inconvenience of having to restore the data.

With this in mind, we introduce the Iperius backup software which is a powerful, but yet extremely lightweight and feature-rich piece of software. The Iperius backup and recovery software offers a number of different ways to ensure the safety of your data via multiple backup options – both physical and online.

Users of Iperius are able to make scheduled and incremental backups to/from numerous devices, including online storage services such as Google Drive, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox and OneDrive. The physical options allow users to sort their data backup on external USB drives, NAS and TAPE devices, other computers in the network and FTP servers.

All of these options, of course, apply to both individual files, full disk and system images (which can be used for reinstallation of data via a bare-metal restore) and all of the most important databases today on the market: SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle and PostgreSQL.

As such, the Iperius software provides the most comprehensive of coverage for every aspect of personal and/or business data in the instance of any of the listed causes of data loss occurring, whether it is accidental deletion of data or a database, the breaking of a hard drive or vital piece of hardware, targeted attack or, with the online cloud backups, full data centre loss due to natural disaster.

To top this impressive array of backup abilities the Iperius software offers a unique web console that allows users to actively check logs and any possible errors within the data, run a backups or update Iperius to the latest version from the comfort of their own machine. This, coupled with the fact that every action that can be taken to secure your data has its own personal and individual step-by-step tutorial (all of which can be viewed here – https://www.iperiusbackup.net/en/category/1-tutorials-en/), makes Iperius the perfect partner in the physical and online backup of your data as well as allowing data recovery in the event that the worst happens to your vital information.

(Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil))