Accidentally deleted documents. Intentional hacking. Hard drive failures. Power black outs. Software bugs. There are all sorts of ways you can lose data. According to the 2016 EMC Global Data Loss and Protection Index, 71 % of Australian organisations are still not fully confident in their ability to recover after a disruption. So how can you beat the odds and bounce back from data loss?

Deleted files

Human error is the most common cause of data loss.

Like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy says: Don’t panic. 99.9% of the time, that document you were working on can be found. Deleted files should really be called ‘invisible files’, since they don’t actually disappear altogether, they’re just hidden from view. That is until the file is overwritten by another file. Act really, really, really fast, and it can be retrieved from your hard drive with a little help from some file recovery software.

If you’re working in Windows, you can take a look in the Recycle Bin yourself first. If you spot the missing file, right-click on it, and select Restore.

Corrupted files

A file corruption error notice sure looks scary, however, it’s not necessarily as bad as it first appears. It may be that it is only the operating system that is damaged, in which case you can connect your hard drive to another computer and retrieve the remaining data. Or perhaps only a portion of the files have been irreparably damaged, in which case you can use recovery software to retrieve the usable portions.

Physical damage

Oops. You dropped your laptop and now it won’t turn on. Getting files off a faulty hard drive is not easy. At this point, it’s best to call in a recovery specialist and get ready to shell out a considerable amount of your bank balance (think upwards of $1,000) in return for what’s left of your data.

The ultimate and easiest solution

There is an amazing array of recovery software on the market, specific to every type of data loss. There are two major downsides to all of these though: time, and money. Finding and applying the right software to your problem can come at a significant cost and cause serious delays. In fact, the EMC survey also found that data loss and downtime costs Australian businesses more than $65 billion each year. Ouch!

Your best bet is to avoid losing the data in the first place. Have a secure backup system in place and backup your data every day. You can make backups to the cloud, to another hard drive, or both. You can take specific steps to avoid file corruption. And of course, you can ask an expert about the best solution for your business.

Know where you stand

You can make a quick assessment of how your data recovery readiness compares by completing the global rankings survey.

What have you got to lose?