No one wants data loss, but of all the
internet wired people I know, I have
yet to meet one who has not, at some
point, lost important data. This is
inevitable, and has nothing to do with
the electronic age in particular. Think
about it. Haven't you ever lost a notebook
for school, or perhaps a paper that
you had to turn in? No matter what form
our data takes, we will have to face
the possibility of losing it. Fortunately
computers, unlike other mediums, provide
us with data recovery utilities to cope
with these disasters.
The best data recovery utility is
one which prevents data loss before
it happens by providing a backup copy.
Really, any kind of file backup system
can be considered a data recovery
utility. There are many different
forms of backup, which vary in complexity,
reliability, physical location, and
expense. The simplest data recovery
utility is making a physical backup
of important files. This can be done
with a flash drive, which can then
be carried with you, or put in a safe
place. This has the advantage of portability,
but isn't really all that reliable
of a data recovery utility.
A better idea is to backup on a physical
hard drive. There are data recovery
utilities called raid systems, which
will automatically create an identical
copy of your hard drive as you go
along. This is great, because if one
hard drive fails, you will still have
all of your files on the other hard
drive. Another kind of data recovery
utility is an off-site backup. This
means that your computer logs into
a server and uploads encrypted copies
of its data on a nightly basis. The
data is secured and protected on that
remote system. This has the advantage
that if something were to happen to
your building – say a fire,
or an earthquake or other natural
disaster, there would still be a perfect
copy of your data existing elsewhere.
Of course, once you physically lose
your data, you can still find a data
recovery utility to use, but your
chances of success are much lower.
There is data recovery utility software
which will search a damaged hard drive,
or the fragments of an accidentally
erased file, and will sometimes, at
least partially, be able to recover
what you have lost. Still, this kind
of data recovery utility only has
a moderate success rate at best, so
you would do better to take adequate
precaution to not lose your data in
the first place.
