Need a Data Recovery? - Follow the simple steps below!
Send your Hard Disk to Salvation Data, 105 Upper Lisburn Road, Belfast, BT10 0LG
Send us your Hard Drive. Make sure to include your name and address inside package.
We will Recover your Data from your PC or Mac Hard Disk for 249.99+vat within 24-72 Hours not Weeks! We offer the best value service within UK.
You verify the data via email or telephone.
We will let you decide what method you want the data backed up.
We dispatch data to you on a next day service
Our Address: Salvation Data 105 Upper Lisburn Road, Belfast BT10 0LG Email us 24x 7 at sales@salvationdata.co.uk
Reasons to keep redundant copies of your data
- by Terri Chu
Don't put all your eggs in one storage basket. Although we recommend always having a backup, some people seem to think that backup devices are infallable and hence start doing things like deleting original files from their limited space computers.
Backups fail too! Best practice is to always have two copies of your data at any given time and on a weekly basis, create a third backup at an offsite location. This is in case your premises get robbed or a major fire takes out all your equipment.
However, too many people seem to think because their backup devices have fancy names, they won't fail and start using it as a primary place of storage. Don't do that!
RAID failures
For the uninitiated, RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". RAIDs are great as they have built in redundancy. The idea is that a RAID is never supposed to fail. In theory, it works out quite nicely but as someone who works in the data recovery business, I can tell you that we've been asked more than once to recover RAIDs. If they never failed, this would never happen.
There are several different types of RAIDs that work on different premises. Some have full redundant copies of data while others use varying data splitting techniques that will leave your data uncompromised should any one hard disk fail. For this reason, people have a misconception that RAIDs will never lose their data.
Consider this scenario. A RAID array is arranged with a "hot swappable" disk. This means that should one fail, the "hot disk" simply kicks in while the dead drive is getting replaced. As the part is getting ordered, the RAID is functioning for several days or even a week or two in high gear as there is one drive down. In all likelihood, when the RAID was installed, all the drives were sourced from the same place and are all on its last legs. Should a second drive fail while the first one is still on order, all the data stored in it will be gone.
Can't happen? Think again. This scenario didn't get made up. Even if the RAID goes down, in theory, it shouldn't matter if individual computers still carried copies of the data it is supposed to backup. As the RAID system became a dependable place for storage over the years, we've seen people get complacent and delete original data off their smaller capacity computers and depend solely on a single source of storage.
Cloud computing
Storing on a cloud is again another great way to backup data. However, be cautioned against using a cloud location as primary data storage. Consider the case of Carbonite. The online backup company is suing its hardware provider for what they claim is defective firmware. Wherever the fault lies, it is reported that data was still lost.
Anyone who used the online backup as primary storage would have lost data.
Backups are just that... backups.
You should always maintain a primary source of data somewhere in case backups fails. The likelihood of a backup unit failing is about as high as your primary unit failing. The likelihood of both going down at the same time is infinitesimally small. Always keep at least 2 copies of important data and don't get complacent!
About the Author
Terri Chu is a technology consultant with Revival Technologies, a company which specializes in Data Recovery.
