At 24 Hour Data, we know that small businesses and large organizations, alike, use databases for nearly every aspect of operations, from customer relationship management to sales and marketing and more. So when your database fails, you risk losing mission critical data that can cost your company important business… or even cost your entire business.

If you are facing missing or corrupt data in your database or you can’t access your database at all, there are typically three common causes. Let’s look at each one and then determine the best steps to take to recover your lost data.

Database Hardware Failure
A database is just a combination of software and data. Frequently, when a database fails to boot, it’s due to hardware failure. The RAID array, server or hard drive has failed, resulting in the inability to access the database. If your database is stored on a RAID array and only one drive in the array has failed, it may be possible for IT professionals to perform a hot swap and replace the failed drive in a RAID 1 configuration or higher.

If your database is stored on a virtual server, you may be able to restore the server to the time of the last snapshot. If only a small amount of time has passed and your database is not updated frequently, you may be able to recover your lost data.

In many cases, however, hard drive or RAID failure requires a professional data recovery service to restore lost data without the risk of losing that data forever. If you’re in doubt, call data recovery pros to provide a free price quote with no obligation.

File Corruption
Databases may fail at the file level, which means one or more files in the database have become damaged, causing corruption. Corrupted files represent logical damage to the database and hard drive. However, do-it-yourself data recovery may overwrite the data and result in permanent data loss. If you don’t have experience in dealing with data recovery, it’s best to call an expert. Prices for logical data recovery may be lower than you expect, and you could get your data back in less than 24 hours.

File System Damage
Sometimes, operating system files will become damaged or corrupted if a server or computer is powered down incorrectly, experiences a power surge, or something happens to interrupt the process while data is being written to the files.

Since databases are complex systems that are updated frequently, if a damaged OS file corrupts a database directory, it can be difficult to delete and reinstall the OS without permanently losing data from the database.

Call the Experts for Database Recovery
If you’re not an expert in logical data recovery, it’s best to call experts for help.
24 Hour Data has years of experience recovering databases running on a variety of systems, including Microsoft Exchange, SQL, MySQL, Oracle, SharePoint, Filemaker and more.