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Data recovery: Electrical Damage

Natural disasters, including lightning strikes, fires and floods, can prove to be the most challenging data recovery exercises. Most often the hardware will have been badly affected, or even partially destroyed. For some, the disaster may be double, as in many cases backups are not stored off-site or in a fire and waterproof safe. Many businesses have been faced with bankruptcy after a natural disaster has caused the loss of their customer database, financial records, inventory files and manufacturing data.

A lightning strike is of course the worst that could happen, and may cause a hard drive to suffer electrical damage. Unfortunately, only in the most severe cases will it be obvious that electrical damage has occurred, although it should be suspected if a computer power supply fails after an electrical storm. The data loss associated with this type of damage is unlikely to be remedied in-house, and usually the hardware will have to be sent to a data recovery specialist. This should be done as soon as possible, and with the greatest of care in handling and packaging. It is inadvisable to even attempt to operate the hardware concerned if it is visibly damaged; this may well cause further damage, making recovery more difficult or impossible.

Erratic computer behaviour, as well as data loss, may often be caused by poor power quality. Electrical conditions such as power surges and spikes can cause immediate or long-term damage to your computer, but leave other office or home equipment unaffected. A large percentage of all electrical disturbances are actually generated locally by industrial equipment and even household appliances such as microwave ovens. Symptoms of voltage fluctuations may include flickering lights, spontaneous reboots, system crashes, and unexplained data corruption. In-line surge protectors and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) should always be used with computer equipment to prevent these types of events.