10 Common Causes of Data Loss

There are 10 common causes of data loss.

1. Accidental Deletion of Data. There are times when you accidental delete a file or a program from your hard drive. This is an unintentional deletion which may go unnoticed for a long time. Administrative errors also fall under this category. The best thing is to think carefully before you delete any data or program.

2. Accidental drive format. Users accidental format their drives and this result in instant loss of data. However, it is possible to recover your data in a situation like this. Get help from experts.

3. Accidental Damage. If a drive or disk is mishandled or accidentally dropped, this may cause trauma and loss of data. Data recovery is also possible in this case.

4. Natural Disaster. Your hard drive can be damaged due fire, flood or some other unforeseen disasters. The good news is that data can still he retrieved in such situations.

5. Purposeful Deletion of Data. You may have deleted a file intentionally from your system and later decided you wanted the file back. You can still recover your data from the recycle bin. If you have emptied your recycle bin, you can use software recover deleted recycle bin files.

6. Power Failure. If you experience power failure before you have the opportunity to save your work, you may lose valuable data. The advice is to keep saving as your work.

7. Corrupt Data. If your filesystem or database is corrupt, then you are bound to loss data. Again it is possible to recover data from a corrupt filesystem with the right software tool.

8. Software Failure. When your application software suddenly crashes or freezes while working, this may result in severe damage to your hard drive. This causes the program close suddenly and all unsaved work is lost.

9. Virus Attack. If a machine is deeply infected by viruses and worms, spyware, adware and some deadly computer parasites, this can be very deadly and it may result to total corruption and loss of data. Installing a very good anti-virus program will reduce the possibility of having a fatal virus attack.

10. Malicious Attack. Professional hackers or competitors can invade your machine and destroy your system. This will obviously lead to loss of data. The advise is to make you have a strong firewall installed and in place.

The cost of data loss can sometimes be immeasurable, when you consider consequences of not having the data anymore, the time you need to recreate the data and negative impact it will have on other parties involved in the use of the data. In as much as everyone using a machine or device to store data is at risk of losing it, adequate precaution should be taken to minimize such risk.