Data Loss Facts:

• U.S. businesses lose over $12 billion per year because of data loss.
• Hardware or system failure accounts for 78% of all data loss.
• Human error accounts for 11% of all data loss.
• Software corruption account for 7% of all data loss.
• Natural disasters account for only 1% of all data loss.
• More vital data is being stored in smaller spaces.
• Instant access to electronic data has become more crucial in day-to-day business.
• Disaster prevention and recovery plans are often overlooked or outdated.
• Backup tools and techniques are not 100% reliable.
• 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (Source: National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
• File corruption and data loss are becoming much more common, although loss of productivity continues to be the major cost associated with a virus disaster. (Source: 7th Annual ICSA Lab's Virus Prevalence Survey, March 2002)
• The average company spends between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in total ramifications per year for desktop-oriented disasters (both hard and soft costs.) (Source: 7th Annual ICSA Lab's Virus Prevalence Survey, March 2002)
• In addition to being more prevalent, computer viruses were more costly, more destructive, and caused more real damage to data and systems than in the past. (Source: 7th Annual ICSA Lab's Virus Prevalence Survey, March 2002)
• Of those companies participating in the 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey: 46% said each hour of downtime would cost their companies up to $50k, 28% said each hour would cost between $51K and $250K, 18% said each hour would cost between $251K and $1 million, 8% said it would cost their companies more than $1million per hour. (Source: Ontrack - 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey Results, 2001)
• At what point is the survival of your company at risk? 40% said 72 hours, 21% said 48 hours, 15% said 24 hours, 8% said 8 hours, 9% said 4 hours, 3% said 1 hour, 4% said within the hour. (Source: Ontrack - 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey Results, 2001)

The following statistics were gathered from various sources:

• 6%of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year. Giventhe number of PCs used in US businesses in 1998, that translates toapproximately 4.6 million data loss episodes. At a conservativeestimate, data loss cost US businesses $11.8 billion in 1998. (The CostOf Lost Data, David M. Smith)
• 30% of allbusinesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year. 70%fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
• 31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control.
• 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape back-up failures.
• 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.
• 93%of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to adisaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% ofbusinesses that found themselves without data management for this sametime period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives &Records Administration in Washington)
• Americanbusiness lost more than $7.6 billion as a result of viruses duringfirst six months of 1999. (Research by Computer Economics)
• Companiesthat aren't able to resume operations within ten days (of a disasterhit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic Research Institute)
• Simple drive recovery can cost upwards of $7,500 and success is not guaranteed.

Data Loss Quotes and Statistics

Of those companies participating in the 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey:

• 46% said each hour of downtime would cost their companies up to $50k
• 28% said each hour would cost between $51K and $250K
• 18% said each hour would cost between $251K and $1 million
• 8% said it would cost their companies more than $1 million per hour

Miscellaneous stats about computer data loss:

• A hard drive crashes every 15 seconds
• 2,000 laptops are stolen or lost every day
• 32% of data loss is caused by human error
• 31% of PC users have lost all of their PC files to events beyond their control.
• 25% of lost data is due to the failure of a portable drive.
• 44% of data loss caused by mechanical failures
• 15% or more of laptops are stolen or suffer hard drive failures
• 1 in 5 computers suffer a fatal hard drive crash during their lifetime.
• The overall average failure rate of disk and tape drives is 100% - all driveseventually fail

• 40% of Small and Medium Sized Businesses don't back up their data at all.
• 60% of all data is held on PC Desktops and laptops
• 40 - 50% of all backups are not fully recoverable and up to 60% of all backupsfail in general
• One-third of all computers sold are notebooks.
• Mobile workers in North America have represented the majority of theworkforce since 2003

• It takes 19 days and costs $17,000 to retype 20 megabytes of sales data
• The same volume of accounting data takes 21 days and costs $19,000
• Recreating data from scratch is estimated to cost between $2000 and $8000per MB.
• Insurance of business data is expensive, and in certain countries, insurancecompanies will not insure data.
• 60% of companies that lose their data close down within 6 months of thedisaster.
• 72% of businesses that suffer major data loss disappear within 24 months

• Nearly three out of five personal computer users have lost an
• electronic file they thought they had sufficiently stored.
• One in four users frequently back up digital files, even when 85 percent ofcomputer users say they are very concerned about losing important digitaldata.
• 82 percent keep a hard copy of important documents they've also savedelectronically.
• Thirty-seven percent of the survey's respondents admitted to backing up theirfiles less than once per month.
• Nine percent admitted they have never backed up their files.
• More than 22 percent said backing up information is on their to-do list, but theyseldom do it.

• 68 percent save the things most important to them in multiple places, the harddrive as well as removable media such as floppy disks (79 percent) compactdisks (CDs, 58 percent).