We all know the best-laid plans can go awry. Human error, natural disasters and other unforeseeable circumstances can all cause complications and problems at your business. Data loss can impact your productivity and potentially cost you in lost time and hurt your bottom line.
While we certainly hope you never have to face data loss, the best offense is a good defense. To do that, there are some best practices you should keep in mind if you’re dealing with corrupt data, broken hard drives or mechanical problems. These tips and best practices will help you create a well-rounded plan of action for data recovery.
The Top 5 Best Practices for Data Recovery
Create an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
A disaster recovery plan is a must-have for any business. The contemporary office — especially any with distributed workers — should have a plan in place if something should happen. Your most critical business functions can heavily rely on your IT infrastructure, and continuing to operate after a natural or manmade disaster will depend on having a disaster recovery plan.
If you take stock of all of your business’s IT network, tools and capabilities, you can better plan for a scenario where some or all of it is unavailable. To get started with a basic plan, you can ask yourself a few questions:
- What procedures and policies need to be in place to minimize downtime?
- Can your staff still work if they’re distributed or remote?
- Do you have a data restore tool on-hand in case of loss?
- Is all of your essential data remotely backed up and accessible?
These questions are a starting point for your plan. An IT disaster recovery plan, depending on your business’s size, can be quite complicated. Should you need help, you can enlist the expertise of an IT consultant to create a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.
Create a Remote Backup of Your Data
Prevention is your best friend for data loss and it starts with remotely backing up all of your data. A remote backup is a secure way to protect all of your sensitive and confidential data. A remote backup isn’t the same as simply storing documents in the cloud. A remote backup to the cloud or to a secure off-site location is your fallback if your onsite data should be inaccessible or lost.
A remote, cloud-based backup can ensure no matter where you are after you lose data, you can still retrieve it. If you have employees distributed coast-to-coast, the cloud is an easy and effective way to minimize downtime and maintain your productivity.
Avoid DIY Repair
When you lose your data, your gut instinct might be to try and fix the problem yourself. A hard drive can fail for many reasons, but unless you’re a data recovery expert, you could be risking causing more damage.
There are two kinds of damage that can cause data corruption or loss: physical damage to the hardware or logical damage to the software. In either case, trying to repair a motherboard or installing software on a damaged hard drive could make things worse.
Minimize Access to Failed Hard Drives
When you’re in the process of recovering data, it’s essential to minimize access to the failed hard drives as much as possible. Repeated use of a failed hard drive can risk further corruption of data. A hard drive needs to execute many read/write operations just to boot up, and trying to repeatedly boot up the drive can further damage it.
In the case of severe data loss, an expert can help with this kind of logical damage. They’ll be able to identify the issue and then recover the data before transferring it to a new hard drive. While some data recovery tools can help, an expert is your best chance to recover precious or sensitive data.
Have a Data Recovery Specialist on Standby
A data recovery specialist is a lifeline for businesses suffering from data loss. A data recovery team will have the tools to repair physical damage and the knowledge to recover inaccessible data caused by logical damage.
When you work with a data recovery specialist, their expertise can also lend itself to preventing future loss. You can receive personalized support and recommendations for how to best protect your data, including how to best maintain data security.
Data Recovery: Know Your Options
Data loss can be a business owner’s worst nightmare, but you can mitigate the problems it causes with a plan and by following best practices for recovery. Whether it’s human error or a natural disaster like a hurricane, you want your data in safe hands.
At Data Line, we specialize in data recovery and preventing future data loss for business owners. We take a personal approach to all of our IT services, so you can expect tailored solutions and guidance for your issues. Whether you need help with a damaged hard drive or corrupted data, we can help get your business back up and running.