What would happen to your business if your computer went down?

Data loss is a major issue for businesses of all sizes. Losing files means losing time and money to restore or recover information that is crucial to your business. Data loss occurs when data is accidentally deleted, or something causes data to become corrupted. Viruses, physical damage or formatting errors can render data unreadable by both humans and software. Losing files and documents often has a lasting impact on your company’s financial health.

One of the causes of data loss is hard drive damage: What are the causes and the effects on your business?

Hard Drive Damage

Hardware malfunctions are the major cause of data loss, with the primary perpetrator being the hard drive. Hard drives are the most fragile parts of computers, and around 140 thousand hard drives crash every week. Of these crashes, 60 percent are due to mechanical issues and 40 percent are a result of human misuse or mishandling. Hard drives can also be damaged if a computer overheats, typically caused by overuse or a build-up of dust in the computer.

Signs of a hard drive failure

• The hard drive frequently crashes
• The computer is unusually hot
• Processing speeds continually slow
• The computer freezes frequently
• The computer makes clicking or grinding noises
• Files will not open or become corrupted randomly

Effects on the business

Data loss is a major inconvenience that disrupts the day-to-day function of any business. When important files and documents are lost, your business must spend time and resources recreating or recovering these files to fill the gaps left by loss. While you may be able to locate hard copies of information, these may not be as up-to-date as the digital copies that were lost. 

Downtime can cost companies $5,600 per minute and up to $300,000 per hour in web application downtime (according to a 2014 Gartner’s analysis).

The impact on reputation and loyalty

How much is your business reputation worth? This may be extremely difficult to assess, as well as the long-term effect of a damaged reputation and its impact on revenue and profitability.

In this case, downtime costs include lost customers (you will need to spend time rebuilding client relationships), and other tangible elements that reflect the costs of reputation impairment like stock downturns, marketing hours (crisis and brand recovery management) and media budget required to reboot and polish up an organization’s profile.

How can we help?

To prevent hard drive malfunctions, be sure to work with your device appropriately and keep your computer away from excessive dust.

 We can ensure that a random malfunction doesn’t destroy your data by regularly backing up your hard drive on an external drive or cloud server.

In a case of data loss, you may be able to recover lost data from a hard drive damage by removing the hard drive from the computer and connecting it to another computer to see if any files are not damaged. If the hard drive is entirely corrupted, it is best to contact a professional to help you recover data lost from a crashed hard drive.