The recovery of data after an event of such great magnitude is called disaster recovery of data. And a recovery plan is what should be in place to prevent the loss of data under such circumstances and to recover what is lost within the minimum time. Go to Business Continuity for more information.

Ways of Loss through Disasters

What are the disasters that may cause data loss?

?€? Data Loss through Human Attacks: This includes wars, attacks, bomb blasts, and all other forms of physical attack by human beings. It must be noted here that virus attacks or attacks by hackers are not counted within this category. The 9/11 blast, or the bomb attack on the Mumbai Stock Exchange in India are examples of such disasters.

?€? Data Loss through Accidents: This includes shipwrecks, car crashes, plane crashes or any other form of accident on road, air, rail or sea. This does not include driving your laptop, letting your USB drive fall out of your pocket into a glass of water, or letting the mobile phone slide into the bath as you receive a call in the morning. The catastrophic nature of the data loss is of prime importance here. The humans involved must be victims of the circumstances, and not the perpetrators themselves.

?€? Data Loss through Natural Disasters: This includes hurricanes, floods, fire, storm, earthquake, landslide and other forms of natural disaster. Apart from claiming hundreds of lives and millions worth in properties, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami that struck South East India and the Pacific islands, were the cause of terrible data loss. These are the worst cases of data loss and often impossible to recover even by hardcore professionals. Fire damage is not recoverable if the temperature rises beyond the melting point of iron. Water is even worse, since the layer of corrosive dust particles left behind when the moisture eventually dries is a total hard disk killer.
Refer to Disaster Recovery for more information.

Earthquakes bring the double threat of data loss through being buried in dust and debris and through impact. A hard disk can absorb up to 300G of shock, but beyond that, the data will literally fly off the disk surface. Dust can settle in between the upraised portions and etchings on the surface of the boards and circuits, and if the dust gets to the surface of the hard disk, then there is very little hope of data recovery. The major problem here is that the initial phase after a disaster is spent in trying to recover from the loss of lives and basic amenities, and data recovery attempts may not happen till it is too late.

What are the Methods of Protection?

A successful disaster recovery plan is put into place by experts and requires specialised handling as well as awareness. Some such steps are as follows:

?€? All equipment and intellectual property of a company should be registered and insured.

?€? Complete fire protection is mandatory, and there should be provisions for water damage in hurricane-prone zones. It is also advisable that buildings in earthquake and hurricane-prone areas have a basement or bunker where the back up system may be housed. This is already in place in many states of the US. It is no use if you keep the backup computer on the eleventh floor office, and it gets buried under the rubble with everything else when the building collapses.

?€? In tsunami or flood-prone areas, it is important to have a backup in higher floors, on buildings on stilts, or special buildings on upraised ground as many South East Asian coastal countries and islands have been adopting.

?€? The best solution is to have an online or off-site backup as provided by a professional company. That way, the data is intact even when the physical location of the data is destroyed. This is the best method for both home users and companies.

Disasters and How They Affect Us

It must be remembered that the effect of a disaster is not merely physical. There has to be adequate training to deal with disasters and counselling services to recover from the trauma once the event has happened. Companies are waking up to the aspects of panic control, security and dealing with trauma especially after the 9/11 incident. Visit Disaster Recovery for further information.