What are Various Hardware and Software Causes Due to Which Data can Get Lost?

by: jameswalsh
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Data loss can occur in a variety of ways. Your data can suddenly become hard to decipher when your computer’s file system gets corrupted. Physical damage to the computer or the hard drive can have disastrous consequences. If the physical damage is severe, it might result in permanent data loss. Therefore, physical safety of your data storage devices should be on the top of your priority list.

Create multiple copies of your data to ensure that you have more than one copy of your data should anything disastrous happen to your other copy. Try to store your data storage media in a location other than your office site. This will ensure that your data is protected from physical disasters that might affect your work location. Always remember to keep your storage devices in the storage conditions as mentioned in the storage manual. In addition, you should never expose your data storage devices to extreme weather conditions.

Our interaction with our computer systems is mostly limited to our keyboard and mouse. Unless you are a computer expert, you will not know what is going on inside your computer system. Therefore, when you proceed to do your daily work as usual and your computer screen suddenly goes blank, you find it very hard to imagine the cause of such a scenario.

Recent studies indicate that 56% of the data loss disasters occur due to hardware problems, 9% of the incidents occur due to software errors, and the remaining data loss incidents occur due to human errors and natural disasters. Hard disks are extremely delicate because they consist of several miniscule components working closely together. Any disruption in the components’ working procedure can cause serious damage to the hard drive.

Some industry experts believe that the average lifespan of a hard disk is three years and that they are extremely prone to wear and tear, especially if the handling and the storage conditions of your computer are not appropriate. One of the most common hardware malfunctions is a hard disk head crash. A head crash occurs when the read and write head of the hard disk touches the rotating hard disk platters.

It is important to understand that the hard disk platters rotate at the speed of 150 times per second. Therefore, even the smallest amount of disturbance inside the disk can cause a hard disk malfunction. There are times when people do not understand the fragile nature of the hard disk and attempt to rectify the problem on their own. However, this can only make the problem more severe.

Hard disks are extremely fragile and any type of air or environmental contamination can make your hard disk completely unusable. If you can hear the clicking sound from your hard drive, it may be a result of sudden hard drive failure. In such cases, your operating system will not be able to locate the hard drive in the CMOS setup. This may occur when you expose your computer to sudden and frequent temperature changes.

Another very important cause of hardware failure resulting in data loss is electrical failures. Failure of your computer’s electronic circuit can result in data loss. Electrical failures can occur due to a variety of reasons ranging from electro-static discharge, to sudden power outages, and faulty components. Here, too, the temperature control can make a huge difference because electronic circuits are very prone to damage under hot and humid conditions.

Controller failure is another type of hardware failure due to which you can lose your valuable data. This type of failure occurs when the adapter is not firmly fixed in the appropriate position, when the IRQ conflicts with other devices, when the hard disk is not set up properly, when the hard drive cable becomes faulty, or when the hard drive motherboard experiences some technical problems.

Logical errors occur due to severe corruption of data due to errors in the file system or invalid entries in a file allocation table. In case of logical errors, the data becomes unreadable. Logical errors can be caused by power outages that result in problems with the file system structures.

However, logical errors can also be generated via malicious programs such as viruses. These viruses implement the agenda of data loss rather than data preservation. When a virus hijacks your computer’s boot sector, your computer will continuously keep rebooting.

Logical errors can cause your drive to report erroneous messages, or even result in a system crash. Your computer may display a message saying that the operating system is not found. This means that the logical error has caused damage to the operating system files, your hard drive has been formatted, or the partition table has been damaged. Your system may display a blue screen when you try to boot your system or maybe during the middle of an operation. This means that the operating system has been damaged.

About the Author

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics see http://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk

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