Friday, September 1, 2017

Hurricane Harvey: Ontrack Provides Tips to Prepare for and Deal with Data Loss

Ontrack gives data recovery tips to flood victims during hurricane season

Minneapolis, Minn. – September 1, 2017 –  As the 2017 hurricane season begins to unfold with Hurricane Harvey, Ontrack has put together helpful tips for flood victims on how to care for their data during disaster.  The amount of device damage is yet to be foreseen, but statistics show that individuals are heavily dependent on connected devices that hold their vital information, which means that the number of needed data recoveries will only continue to rise.

According to The Pew Research Center, one third of Americans live in a household with three or more smartphones.  84 percent of American households contain at least one smartphone and 80 percent of households contain at least one desktop or laptop computer.  The dependency on connected devices is magnified when data is lost.

Not only do households depend on connected devices, but businesses do as well.  The latest survey from Information Technology Intelligence Consulting shows that 98 percent of organizations say that a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000.  Simply put, if servers, applications and networks are non-functioning, business takes a major hit.  Infrastructure matters and the right knowledge and preparation for any situation is crucial.

“Data is the lifeblood of all businesses, which is why it is so critical to understand how to prepare for and respond to data loss during a hurricane or any other disaster,” says Todd Johnson, senior vice president, global data and storage technologies.  “In order to minimize the damage caused by a disaster, users should first never assume that data is unrecoverable, despite the severity of the damage.

Johnson advises that flood victims fearing loss of vital information consider the following to help protect their data from further damage:

• Do not shake, disassemble or attempt to clean any hard drive or server that has been damaged; improper handling can make recovery operations difficult
• Never attempt to dry water-damaged media by opening it or exposing it to heat, such as from a hairdryer
• Do not attempt to operate visibly-damaged devices
• Never attempt to plug in or turn on water-damaged devices
• Do not attempt to freeze-dry media
• For mission-critical situations, contact a data recovery professional before any attempts are made to reconfigure, reinstall or reformat

About Ontrack, LLC 
Ontrack provides technology-enabled services and software to help law firms, corporations, government agencies and consumers solve complex data challenges. Part of the KLDiscovery brand, Ontrack provides market leading ediscovery data recovery for any type of media – hard drives, SSD, server, RAID, virtual, cloud, mobile, tape, NAS/SAN/DAS, laptop, desktop computers and Apple devices. Additionally, through proprietary technologies and expert services around the globe, Ontrack helps clients with email extraction, tape management and data destruction.