Probably the worst computer problem that can occur within a company is the loss of data. Even the very thought gives most IT personnel the shivers–and for good reason. Loss of data means that that data must be recovered somehow. If it isn’t, it could have drastic consequences including the loss of somebody’s job. Hence, most companies will take measures to ensure data is protected in case of loss by virus, hardware malfunction, accidental deletion or other cause.
Such measures normally take the form of backup. These range from simple solutions such as a backup performed at the end of each week, to more complex ones such as incremental backups performed daily. If data is lost it can be retrieved from backup and restored.
If data is lost from a virus, disk failure or other such cause, recovery from backup is usually the only way to get it back. But if a file is accidentally deleted, going through the time-consuming process of searching backup has now become outdated and unnecessary thanks to new advanced data protection software solutions.
Probably the most common call to the help desk is, “Help! I’ve lost my file! I accidentally deleted it and I can’t get it back!” In addition to the time-consuming search through backup to retrieve the last backed-up version of the file, another liability is that the file might have been created since the last backup and may never have been backed up. Or, considerable work may have been performed on the file since its last backup, requiring the user to have to substantial reconstruction of it.
Of course, if the file was created and saved on a local machine, the file can be retrieved from the Windows Recycle Bin. But this is rarely the case; most files these days are saved to a company server over a network. The Windows Recycle Bin cannot recover files deleted over a network.
An advanced data protection solution replaces the Windows Recycle Bin with one of its own, and allows instantly recovery of accidentally-deleted files over a network. With such technology, hours of aggravation for the IT department, as well as user frustration, can be completely eliminated. If a user accidentally deletes a file, it can be immediately recovered with the click of a mouse.
This same kind of solution also allows for the retrieval of earlier versions of other file types which normally cannot be recovered in any circumstances, such as earlier, over-written versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
Along with backups, advanced data protection makes for a complete data protection scheme that ensures an enterprise’s data is almost always safe.
