Case Study: My Data Recovery Nightmare

I am a trained web professional, with a BSc in Computer Programming, as well as several other web certifications, and after several years of working for a large, well-established web development firm, started my own business two years ago. I have two full-time employees, as well as several freelance web developers, programmers and content writers that I employ on a need-based basis. My business had only two clients in 2005, but has now carved out quite the niche for itself in the flash-based website business. My team’s hard work saw us winning two ‘Webby’ awards last year for innovative website design.

My ordeal started when I decided to move my firm out of a spare room in my home into an office of its own only down the road in order to conduct an expansion that was long overdue. The spare room was becoming quite cramped for my two employees and myself, and it was eminently unsuitable for meeting clients! I employed a professional moving agency to help my employee and I complete the move; my other employee was on personal leave as her mother had taken unwell. It is probably prudent to note at this juncture that the absent employee’s duties including conducting a complete backup of all data on the primary server and data storage unit before leaving for home every night. I usually make sure that this procedure is carried out religiously, as I am paranoid about the integrity and safety of my client data and deadlines. I suppose that I was a bit hassled and out of sorts due to the move and forgot to double-check whether the backup had been done before giving the movers the go-ahead to move my equipment from one location to another.

Tragedy struck when four movers were carefully manoeuvring a large carton containing both my mainframe server and external storage drives through the door of my new office. One mover was suddenly struck by an excruciatingly painful back spasm, screamed, took his hands off the corner of the carton he was supporting, and fell to the floor in agony. The events that followed seemed to occur in slow motion; the mainframe and the drives toppled out of the now-tilting carton, fell and hit the floor with a loud thud.

I panicked. The potentially damaged equipment had data absolutely critical to my business on it, and I realised at that very moment that due to my employee being away on leave, the backup also had not been performed. My first instinct was to try to plug in the equipment and try to see for myself whether the data still existed or not; a quick call to a friend, who was a computer hardware expert soon put that idea to rest as he advised me that if the drives were physically damaged, powering them up might exacerbate the damage and potential data loss. He advised me to immediately call Fields Data Recovery, a firm whose services he was familiar with and highly recommended. A quick web search on my employee’s laptop yielded both glowing testimonials attesting to Fields’ professionalism and technical expertise, so I contacted them and obtained the necessary information to send my equipment for an estimate.

Fields got in touch with me soon after the equipment was delivered to them via overnight courier. Their helpful representative explained that the mainframe appeared to have a logical failure, while the external hard drives had more serious physical failures. I was given an estimate for the data recovery, and gave them the go-ahead to proceed. I also notified them of which data was more critical for my business as I wished them to attempt to recover that portion first; luckily, the damage occurred on a long weekend, and my nearest deadline was a fortnight away, so that was definitely a bit of luck.

Long story short, Fields were able to recover 96% of my data, as well as tell me what 4% was irretrievable, which helped me contact my clients and have them send me that information again. They were extremely professional, and served to allay my fears about losing all my data from the very beginning of my interaction with their courteous and knowledgeable staff. My nightmare thus had a rather un-nightmarish ending, thanks to the data recovery experts over at Fields Data Recovery.

I have now learnt my lesson, and have automated the backup process at my firm; I would advise everyone to do the same! The only way to avoid experiencing a repeat of the nightmare I experienced would be backup, backup and backup!