How protected is your data?

[Guest]

Data Loss and Security is the number one problem facing domestic and business users throughout the world. Facts:
• 99% of all computer users do not carry out daily backups.
• 60% of all file backups are incomplete.
• 1 in 10 hard drives fail in the first 12 months.
• Only 3 out of every 10 lost or stolen computers are ever recovered.
• 50% of all conventional restores fail.
• Over 50% of businesses who lose their data go out of business within a year.
• Onsite backup offers ZERO protection against fire, flood, virus or theft.
• By the time you finish reading these facts 16,304 people will lose files!
Today, there is a new way of addressing data protection challenge, a state-of-the-art solution that helps you get started quickly and easily. Solution which is designed by worlds leading software teams, with the user in mind. We call it ‘Set It, Save It & Forget It’!

 

[sub mesa]

This is an advertorial. I don't think that's allowed on these forums.

 

[sminlal]

> 99% of all computer users do not carry out daily backups.
Sadly, this seems like it could be true judging by the number of "how do I recover my data after I formatted my drive?" and similar questions posted on this forum.


> 1 in 10 hard drives fail in the first 12 months.
Based on my experience over many years both at home and in a datacenter, this seems inflated to me. The Google study on HDD failure rates seems to suggest about 1-4% failure rate in the first year, with the 4% rate applying only to drives with the highest utilization.


> 50% of all conventional restores fail.
Easy to protect against by (1) testing your restores, and (2) keeping multiple backup generations on different media to protect against backup media failure.


> Onsite backup offers ZERO protection against fire, flood, virus or theft.
Well, it does protect against viruses as long as it's OFFLINE. But yes, offsite backups are, IMHO, very important!


I never really look at the "how can I get my data back?" posts here because I really don't have any data recovery experience and so probably can't be of much help. The only suggestions I can make based on my experience are basically: "you should have backups so you can restore your data from them!".

I back stuff up religiously, and in the very few instances that I've had problems I just restore it. I'm afraid I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for folks who are devastated by loosing precious data. IMHO backups are insurance, you should no more ignore them than you would ignore insurance on the contents of your home.