There is no arguing to the fact that if you need to survive in today's dynamic business environment, then you must make diligent efforts to preserve your valuable assets forever.
With the exploding volumes of data and use of data intensive systems, it is incumbent on us to plan for appropriate data backup and archiving solutions as data has its own value.
Loss of data and computer downtime are the two most formidable incidents that lead to business downfall.
Small and mid-size businesses are becoming increasing vulnerable to data loss due to careless planning and lack of disaster recovery solutions.
A recent survey revealed that more than seventy percent of small businesses could be at the risk of bankruptcy due to a single event of data loss.
Other aspects of data loss include lost contracts, lost stock value, broken customer relationships, and much more.
The Cost of Data Recovery vs Actual Cost of Data Loss It would sound weird that your seemingly lost data is never irretrievable and always has some chance of recovery (albeit minor).
In cases where your storage media suffers no physical damage, you can employ an in-house support person to assist you in performing recovery of all your lost files.
Such loss incidents usually eventuate from software corruption, virus infection, human errors, and the like.
These account for only a small percentage of disasters.
Other episodes of data loss result from physical hard drive failures and media degradation.
When your media is subject to physical damage, it is not recommended to make any non-professional attempts at data recovery.
At this stage, it is better off sending your drive to an experienced data recovery service provider.
These companies have state-of-the-art infrastructure and robust tools to conduct hard drive data recovery under a controlled environment for precise results.
The cost of recovering data from damaged drives depend on many variables, such as severity of damage and type of media.
However, this cost does not exceed the actual cost of a data loss incident.
A data loss event can impact an organization in myriad ways, including lost productivity, lost company sales and profitability, and more importantly, the 'contamination effect'.
One employee's computer downtime can have a drastic effect on others in the organization.
These people may be directly or indirectly related to that employee.
This extra cost is called the opportunity cost.
This contributes to the overall cost of a data loss incident.
In a nutshell, any incident that results in loss of data has more dire consequences as you may imagine.
You should never compare the cost of data recovery with the actual cost and productivity losses incurred in a data loss incident.
It is good to go for recovery as soon as you face a disaster in order to greatly minimize your losses.