Few decades ago, textual data had a different shapes employee information, bank accounts and customers data, Tax information, schools’ student data and vice versa. The nature of data and its uses were different but the medium was the one that paper or paper registers. For example, banks used to store accounting information and account holder’s data on registers, school, hospitals and other organizations were also used paper registers to store data. Photographs were stored on special papers called photo papers. Then, there was a time when audio and video data were used to store on tape devices which was however a digital form of data. After the invention of chip, storing of data entered in a new era which is called digital age which still persists. Data forms are similar like photographs, text, audio and video but they are stored digital using different digital devices. Like Hard Disks, USB, DVDs, SD Card and TF Card.
Recording data in digital format have many advantages as compare to storing data on papers. I will explain this advantage later in some other post however, today I will discuss reason of data loss in digital devices and how can we protect our digital data.
- Accidently or Manually Deletion of Digital Data
Normally every day we have a lot of data storing in our storage devices. When we try to organize our data which a daunting task to exclude unwanted or temporary data, we accidentally delete our data which is vital for us for our future use. However nowadays we have the blessing of data recovery tools. By using this we can recover our data. However, we recover the data from a particular storage device, the main issue is that it recovers lot of data and once again we have to refine the data.
- Power Failure or Power Surge.
Many storage devices require electric to function properly, sometime power failure or power surge damage or corrupt the digital data. Power failure or power surge are very common problem in Asian region where power supplies face such kind of issues due to lake of advance technology. We can prevent such data corruption by placing a ups or power regulator devices that make it sure that if power fails, we have a certain time to protect or save the data. Surge protector another electronic device must be installed on our homes or office to deal with power surge issues.
- Physical Damage of Storage Device
Physical damage also another big reason of loss of digital data. Sometimes storage devices drop from our hand or accidently put weight on the storage device that damage the storage media of digital device resulted the loss of digital data. This issue can only be dealt with extra care of handing storage device or a special case of leather or wooden be used when moving storage device.
- Viruses and Malwares
The most important in respect of protecting digital data is to protect your storage devices from viruses and malware attacks. They usually corrupt the data which is no longer available for future use. Today a new kind of viruses and malware flourishing in the IT industry that encrypts data. The data can neither be recovered nor protected. Viruses and malware are one of the major causes of loss of digital data as in most cases these two are responsible for loss of data. You can protect your data by following the steps
- Use Licensed Software / OS
- Install Antivirus or anti-malware software
- Keep your antivirus and OS always updated.
- Do not visit a malicious website.
- Do not open malicious emails.
- Theft of Storage Device
Storage device theft is another cause of digital data loss. In such a case one not only lost the digital data but the storage device as well. Usually, USBs are theft easily. Normally we should not safe our most important data in USBs as it will not only lose of digital data but our information will be leaked to unwanted person and one can face worst experience and consequences of his life.
- Fires or Floods and Catastrophic events of Storage Device.
The last but not least reason of data lost are fires, floods and cataphoric events that can destroy our storage devices and data stored in them. It can only be prevented by making backup our digital data. Furthermore, we should not place our storage devices where these risks exist.
