Retropsective Disaster Recovery - Data Recovery

If you lost data and your backup plan does not provide protection for this sort of catastrophe, there is still hope.

• PrioritizeIn Triage section we talked about working out what is critical to your organization. You also need to decide how much you’re prepared to spend to recover.
• Try your backups Tapes and CDs can be surprisingly resilient, so try them out, even if they look bad. Make sure the media and equipment is dry and, if possible, try reading from the tape or CD drive that you originally recorded from. If that doesn’t work, try several different CD or tape drives. Sometimes you just need a higher quality drive to recover information you thought was gone forever.
• Use a data recovery company If your information is mission critical (such as your donor list) you may want to pay for data recovery. There are a lot of companies that do this. See Appendix C for a list. Costs can range from just a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Many companies are offering free assessments to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. One data recovery vendor offers this advice:

1. Never assume that data is unrecoverable, no matter what it has been through.
2. Do not attempt to power up visibly damaged devices.
3. Do not shake or disassemble any hard drive or server that has been damaged—improper handling can make recovery operations more difficult, potentially leading to permanent loss of valuable information.
4. Do not attempt to clean or dry waterlogged drives or other media.
5. Before storing or shipping wet media, it should be placed in a container that will keep it damp and protect shipping material from getting wet. Wet boxes can break apart during transit causing further damage to the drive.
6. Do not use common software utility programs on broken or water-damaged devices.
7. For mission critical situations, contact a data recovery company before any attempts are made to reconfigure, reinstall, or reformat.
8. When shipping your hard drives, tapes, or other removable media, package them in a box that has enough room for both the media and some type of packing material that allows for NO movement. The box should also have sufficient barrier room around the inside edges to absorb impact during shipping.
9. If you have multiple drives, tapes, or other removable media that need recovery, ship them in separate boxes or make sure they are separated with enough packing material so there will be no contact.

• Look for other sources of your data Think about other places you may have inadvertently stored the data. Perhaps you e-mailed your database to a consultant and it’s sitting in their e-mail in-box somewhere. Perhaps printouts of the data exists that you can type back in (data entry is often less expensive than calling on technology experts). If you find a copy of your data – back it up and make a copy before you do anything else. Use only the copy you have made, and save the original in case things go wrong with the copy.