5-Star Solutions, Ltd. FYI Page of important information on data loss.

For Your Information:

We have provided three areas of information here;

What causes data loss?

According to a data recovery company who specializes in recovering data from the physical media, their customers reported losses caused by the following:

Hardware or System Malfunctions
Human Error
Software Corruption or Program Malfunctions
Computer Viruses
Natural Disasters
Other

As you can see the majority of the data loss is caused by hardware or system problems. Most hard drives used today have an average lifetime of 3 to 6 years, depending on their use. Manufacturing defects have reduced but are still a threat to your data.

Even though there have been technological advances in the reliability of storage media, data losses continue to rise. Having a reliable disaster recovery plan is crucial to your business. To the left are some of the reasons for the increases in data loss.

5-Star Solutions, Ltd provides businesses with an added measure of security by providing our Clients with a disaster recovery plan and remote data backup services to help insure customers can quickly and easily recover from what ever may occur causing them to loose their data.

More data in smaller spaces: With larger hard drives and the advancement of how data is stored on a drive going from FAT 16 to FAT 32 and now NTFS data is more compact on a drive.
Data is more mission critical to a business: More industries are relying on computers to store and receive massive amounts of data related to their business, everything from financial records to inventory control.
No single backup tool or plan is 100% reliable: Data is stored on media that is susceptible to failure at any time without warning.

The table to the left is information reported by clients to Safeware, Inc., an agency that specializes in insurance programs for computer users and businesses. They report an increase of 110% in claims related to "accidents" from the prior year and 124% from water and flood damages. As more businesses and people use computers these number could continue to rise.

Although insurance is important, it can not replace lost data! Insurance is essential in this day and age, and so is Remote Data Backup services. Think of Remote Data Backup service as a kind of "insurance" for your data.

Source: Safeware, Inc.

How much does it cost when you loose data?

What does it cost your industry per hour in downtime? The cost is amazing! The banking industry loses $996,000 per hour and energy related industries lose $2.8 Million per hour. Where does your industry fall in these categories? Could you afford it?

*Industry Sector*	*Revenue/Hour*
Energy	$2.8 million
Telecommunications	$2.0 million
Manufacturing	$1.6 million
Financial Institutions	$1.4 million
Information Technology	$1.3 million
Insurance	$1.2 million
Retail	$1.1 million
Pharmaceuticals	$1.0 million
Banking	$996,000

Companies that specialize in recovering data charge hundreds to thousands of dollars to recover data from your media.

Different types of media include; Hard drives, tape cartridges, floppy disks, zip disks, etc.

A recent quote from one company for a 20GB Hard Drive was $100 to analyze the disk and $600 to $2200 for the recovery. On an "emergency" basis those costs raise to $1000 to analyze and $3000 to $9000 for the recovery of data from a SINGLE disk!!!

Source: IT Performance Engineering & Measurement Strategies: Quantifying Performance Loss, Meta Group, October 2000.

What can I do to prevent losing data?

There are many things you can do to prevent losing your data, although not any one of them are 100% reliable.

First, call or contact 5-Star Solutions, Ltd and arrange for your FREE Personalized Professional Risk Analysis. We can then evaluate your own situation and make recommendations for a Disaster Recovery Plan based on your situation.

Second, based on your Personalized Professional Risk Analysis and your suggested Disaster Recovery Plan determine the time frame you want to implement your plan. Remember, the longer you wait the more it could cost your business. Your FREE Two Week Trial can start TODAY! Just click on the link below.

Third, refer 5-Star Solutions, Ltd to another business owner. We rely heavily on word of mouth advertising and reward our clients for any referrals that are made to 5-Star Solutions, Ltd.

Last modified: 04/01/04