May 3

Get Your Disaster Plan together for Data Recovery

Get Your Disaster Plan together for Data Recovery; photo by cancsajn It’s Small Business Week and a perfect time for organizations to consider a data recovery fire drill to ensure business gets back in order in the event of a disaster, data or otherwise.

Hard drives in your computer system are not fail-safe and can and will fail for numerous reasons. Often those responsible for business IT may not be aware that one or more of the drives are acting up or about to go down causing major headaches for the users, owners and system admins alike.

To properly plan against a data loss crisis, running simulations now could prevent major stress later. Some preparation tips are:

  • Establish a team and verbally walk-through scenarios and recovery plans
  • Create a checklist; include emergency contacts, vendor contact numbers, staff instructions and any flowcharts
  • Run a simulation testing a failure, either hardware, software, environmental, etc. Emergency contacts can be called in, building services interrupted, staff disrupted to spot and identify any hiccups in your preparedness plan.
  • Finally, a full-scale test can be run which actually does shut down critical servers or operations so that complete restore plans are enacted business-wide.

These drills will keep your staff sharp and ready and the entire organization trained in exactly what to do if or when you do experience a disaster situation.

When it comes to the digital devices and data storage in your business that might be affected by a disaster, you’re going to want to make sure steps are in place to prevent and protect from data loss. The most common causes of hard drive failure are overheating, excessive vibration, power surges, poor quality of components and systemic damage such as failed firmware updates. If you have already experienced a disaster, CBL recommends following these steps to prevent further damage and data loss:

  • Turn off the system. Avoid repeated resets and power-cycling
  • Do not run volume repair or rebuild utilities on any drives in question
  • A CBL emergency representative can help in determining next steps
  • Remove the affected drive(s) from the device and label each drive before providing to CBL

The most important thing: Don’t Panic. In most cases data is recoverable, but seeing the drives in as-close-to-the-original-failure state is critical to improving the chances of recovery. DIY software, CHKDSK, force-mounting a RAID can all cause additional damage or obfuscate the original issue. Contact a CBL specialist right away for specific advice to help you overcome this crisis.

Category: data loss prevention, helpful hints

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