Kroll Ontrack has recovered 103+ Petabytes of data over the past 25 years

New statistics from Kroll Ontrack have revealed that an expansion in the use of storage technologies and digital information runs parallel to a surge in the creation of data loss and data recovery devices. The company specializes in data recovery, information management, and legal technologies solutions.

Over the last two decades, Kroll Ontrack’s data recovery lab has salvaged over 103 petabytes of data.  In 2011, however, the company’s data recovery lab rescused approximately 35 million GB (35 PB) of data and the number of personal computers which were affected by data loss totalled 1.4 million compared to 33,000 in 1987.

"In the past 25 years, the worst cases Kroll Ontrack has seen have coincided with natural disasters, which included burned, water logged and physically damaged drives,” stated Todd Johnson (News - Alert), vice president of operations, Kroll Ontrack. “Despite this, even in extreme situations Kroll Ontrack has been successfully recovering incredible amounts of digital information in both our global recovery labs and cleanrooms. For example, one of the company's most successful endeavors was the recovery of more than 99 percent of mission-critical data from a melted, crashed, and burned drive from the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia."

Kroll Ontrack analyses indicate that for every thousand computers, data stored on one computer is lost. It’s been estimated that during the 80s, for every one million people, there were 7,000 personal computers and close to 33,000 incurred data loss.

By the mid 1990's, 40,000 devices reported cases of data loss in 225,000 computers, per one million people. Last year the statistic jumped dramatically to 200,000 computers per one million people and 1.4 million cases of data loss.

A new study from IDC (News - Alert) Digital Universe showed the total amount of data doubles each year, and is expected to hit 1.8 zettabytes by 2012. Market research firm Gartner indicated that 25 percent of computer users suffer data loss. While the Kroll Ontrack statistics found that hardware failure and human error were the two primary reasons behind data loss, instances of software errors, computer viruses and natural disasters were significant causes.

"You cannot go through day-to-day life without interfacing with some form of digital data,” admitted Jeff Pederson, data recovery manager, Kroll Ontrack. “As technology advances to include virtualization, cloud, and social media, individuals, businesses and of course data recovery specialists have to evolve to address these storage mediums and the new challenges they present. Businesses not only have to update their policies and data security practices, but should also investigate and denote a data recovery provider who has proven experience in addressing the latest technologies in their disaster recovery plans."