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Top 10 Data Recovery Bloopers
As Seen On 'IDM.net.au'
May 31, 2004
By Vicky Brauner
Vicky Brauner, CBL Data Recovery Technologies recalls some data disaster stories.
Truth, as the saying goes, is stranger than fiction. The following horror stories are true. The identities of those involved have been omitted, because what happened to them could happen to anyone.
1. Crashes happen
An Australian author had been working on a novel for two years. He'd worked day and night, committing his entire life to the PC without thinking that the machine might not return his devotion. It didn't, and crashed without warning. CBL recovered the novel and will be mentioned in the author's credits.
2. The Big Clean Up
This user sought to reduce the size of files on one part of a partitioned drive by moving some files over to the other side. When he felt safe he hit 'delete'. Unfortunately, the folder-a massive 45G of data-was far too large for the recycle bin, and was deleted. This deleted folder happened to be the keeper. Oops.
3. Upgrade from Windows ME to XP
Another upgraded his hard drive from ME to XP-only to find the folders then held no accessible data. To fix the problem, he decided to restore the ME settings from the recovery disk-thereby further complicating the path to the missing data. This one took days to recover!
4. In a Crisis, People Do Silly Things
The prime server in an urban hospital's system crashed. When minor errors started occurring, system operators, instead of gathering data about the errors, tried anything and everything, including repeatedly invoking a controller function, which erased the entire RAID array data.
5. When the Crisis Deepens, People Do Sillier Things
When the office of a civil engineering firm was devastated by floods, its owners sent 17 soaked disks from three RAID arrays to a data recovery lab in plastic bags. For some reason, someone had frozen the bags before shipping them. As the disks thawed, even more damage was done.
6. Buy Cheap, Pay Dearly
One unfortunate business bought an IBM system-but not from IBM. Then the system manager decided to configure the system uniquely, rather than following set procedures. When things went wrong with the system, it was next to impossible to recreate the configuration.
7. An Almost Perfect Plan
The company purchased and configured a high-end, expensive, and full-featured library for the company's system backups. Unfortunately, the backup library was placed right beside the primary system. When the primary system got fried, so too did the backup library.
8. Lights Are On, But No One's Home
A regional ambulance monitoring system suffered a serious disk failure, only to discover that its automated backup hadn't run for fourteen months. A tape had jammed in the drive, but no one had noticed.
9. Hit Restore and All Will Be Well
After September's WTC attacks, the company's IT staff went across town to their backup system. They invoked Restore, and proceed to overwrite from the destroyed main system. Of course, all previous backups were lost.
10. It's the Simple Things That Matter
The client, a successful business, purchased a "killer" network system, and put in place strict protocols to manage it. Backups were done daily. Unfortunately, no one thought to put in place a system to restore the data to.
About CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc.
Founded in 1993, CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. is a leading international provider of computer data recovery services for clients experiencing data loss. CBL employs experts from varying disciplines coupled with proprietary techniques to retrieve data quickly and effectively from a wide array of affected media for customers ranging from large enterprises to home users.
CBL offers data recovery services worldwide through its network of labs, offices and authorized partners, located in 10 countries on six continents including Brisbane, Australia; San Diego, California and Armonk, NY, USA; Toronto, Canada; Newcastle, United Kingdom; Kaiserslautern, Germany; Beijing, China; Barbados, West Indies; Ponta Grossa, Brazil; Tokyo, Japan; and Singapore.
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