The following statistics were gathered from various sources:
6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in
any given year. Given the number of PCs used in US businesses in 1998,
that translates to approximately 4.6 million data loss episodes. At a
conservative estimate, data loss cost US businesses $11.8 billion in
1998. (The Cost Of Lost Data, David M. Smith)
30% of all businesses 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 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.
(National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
American business lost more than $7.6 billion as a
result of viruses during first six months of 1999. (Research by
Computer Economics)
Companies that aren't able to resume operations within
ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic
Research Institute)
Simple drive recovery can cost upwards of $7,500 and
success is not guaranteed.
"The average failure rate of disk and tape drives are 100%.
All drives will eventually fail."
"There are two types of hard drives - those that have failed and
those that will fail."
