Data Recovery Services Specialist Comments On Fire Damage

Irvine, CA based Hard Drive Recovery Associates (HDRA) recently published a new blog post that explains what computer users can do to preserve their data from fire damage. The company hopes that this information will encourage more in their community to look at the practical options at their disposal before a disaster causes them to lose their data forever. As with all the company’s articles, this post can be read for free on their official website.

HDRA begins the post by acknowledging what many have already seen in the news: wildfires have become more prevalent in recent years on the North American continent. Canada, for instance, has recently suffered extensive wildfires that consumed homes and businesses alike, leaving the residents in these areas without a place to live or work. However, the material possessions and property lost to the flames may not represent all of the loss for these individuals, and in some cases the data that could not be salvaged may represent entire lifetimes’ worth of investment.

As a result, Hard Drive Recovery Associates’s post lays out one of the most effective steps an individual or business can take to protect their data: setting up a system of redundancies that will protect the data from total loss in the event such a disaster occurs. Businesses in particular need to make note of this since it is much less likely they will be able to commence their operations again if they no longer have the data they accumulated since their establishment, from client or customer information to financial records and more.

The answer here is to develop a data center disaster recovery (DR) plan. A good plan, the company explains, will be able to account for a variety of disaster scenarios, from flooding caused by leaky pipes to wildfires and so on. It also has to be scalable in order to ensure that the company’s precious data is not left vulnerable simply because its growth exceeded the plan’s coverage. As always, it is recommended that a professional service be used to examine the company for such vulnerabilities, but there are certain steps even small business owners on a budget can take on their own.

Certain aspects of the business need to be considered. This includes who has access to the data at any given time (data center technical and management staff), where the building is located (in relation to surrounding buildings and the environment), how the system is powered and its ability to withstand power disruption from various events and so on. If the data is vulnerable onsite, it will need to be removed manually in an emergency. This makes it more likely it will be lost. Fortunately, HDRA assures their community that there is an easy remedy.

As the company has long argued, data is much harder to lose if it is regularly backed up, and this is what they recommend for business and private individuals alike. Those who do not have the means to set up their own off-site data centers still have the option of considering numerous vendors who provide automatic, secure backups over the internet.

While HDRA specializes in data recovery, services like this are not universally available. In many cases, those who suffer data loss will not be able to find a local professional who can tackle such a daunting task with any assurance of success. As the company states in their post, “It is always important to back up your data. Back up your digital copies of those irreplaceable memories. Should you ever find yourself in such a terrible situation there can be hope of recovery if you back up your files.”

They add, “The horrific beauty of nature doesn’t discriminate and can come unannounced. Try to be as proactive as you can by having a plan in place and back up that data now, while you can.”

Those interested in learning more about data recovery practices are welcome to visit the company’s blog and browse through its many informative articles. Jack Edwards of Hard Drive Recovery Associates can be reached for further details as well.