One of the most important components of a business is how well their data storage and backup systems operate. They’re the first, and often last line of defense a business has when data becomes lost or deleted due to human error, theft, physical device failure, computer virus and other data loss threats.
For many businesses, hard drives play a major role in storing and retrieving company data. Unless you want to lose access to that data forever, when your hard drive starts giving you problems — don’t ignore the signs and proceed to repairs with caution. To improve your data recovery efforts, start by avoiding these five hard drive repair mistakes.
1. Ignoring Warning Signs
If you sense that something may be wrong with your hard drive, stop using it immediately. Clicking noises within the drive or data error messages are key indicators that it’s time to act fast. Continued use of a damaged drive can be dangerous, as this will typically make the problem worse. Even if the problem can be fixed, it’s best to backup your remaining data using a reliable, secondary backup option than to lose everything you have saved.
2. Attempting a DIY Repair
Although you may be a handy person, unless you are trained to repair hard drives, never open them. A DIY attempt could cause further damage and data loss — even airborne dust can get into the drive and damage its sensitive components if you’re not careful. Professionals who handle hard drives all the time are best suited to open your hard drive if the need is present. Opening the drive yourself may seem tempting, but it isn’t worth losing all of your precious data.
3. Formatting Your Drive
Your computer may tell you that you need to format your hard drive if it fails. But pause before you act. This action could diminish your hopes of getting your data back in the event of failure because it could cause recovery systems to overwrite themselves. In some cases, formatting the drive may be necessary. However, it may be best used as a last resort.
4. Skipping Due Diligence
It’s tempting to send your broken hard drive to the first person or business you find who says they can fix it. Whether you decide to use an online data recovery software or to go with a recovery company, be aware and always do thorough research on what you are dealing with. If the sales pitch seems too good to be true, it probably is just that.
5. Repeating Past Mistakes
Once you’ve had a hard drive fail, whether you’ve lost data this time or not, you should do everything you can to ensure it doesn’t happen again next time. Take preventative measures to ensure your data stays safe by backing up your hard drives, computers, and servers to the cloud.
Cloud backup is the most fool proof ways to backup your files. When your devices fail, human error occurs, a virus attacks your system, or any other event with the potential for data loss comes into play — your cloud backup can be relied upon to retrieve all of the data you thought you’d lost forever.
With Nordic Backup, you get secure cloud backup for your files that you can depend on anytime. You can receive emails to know how everything is going and manage your files through the Nordic Backup website. Take comfort that no matter what hard drive fiasco you encounter, your files are safe and ready for you to retrieve in the Nordic Backup cloud.
