Yesterday was National Clean Out Your Computer Day, however, Kroll Ontrack wants to remind people that although it is important to perform regular computer maintenance, people should remember that nearly one third of all data recovery requests come as a result of human error.
Paul Le Messurier, programmes and operations manager at Kroll Ontrack, said: "While most of today’s operating systems leverage built-in utilities to proactively maintain drive health, it is considered prudent to also routinely organise folders, migrate documents off of the desktop and clean out unnecessary files and emails."
"That’s all well and good until a user, or a utility, accidentally deletes an important file – a not-so-uncommon reason individuals utilise DIY data recovery tools or seek the help of a data recovery provider."
Kroll Ontrack has issued some precautions so that you do not experience unnecessary data loss.
Verify your backup. Before you eliminate unneeded files and folders from your drive, it is important to verify that the backup is working correctly. A 2014 Kroll Ontrack survey of customers who had experienced data loss found that 65% of respondents had a backup solution in place, however, either the backup software failed or was not on an automated schedule.
Therefore, before deleting any files, make sure your backup is running regularly in accordance with the schedule, check the backup report for error indications and test the backup prior to a computer clean.
It is important to have a clean-up strategy. Due to increases in storage, it is not always necessary to take a mass deletion approach, sometimes you just need to be more organised. Therefore, it is important to keep your desktop organised, migrate files into logical document folders.
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Additionally you can organise your emails so that you are not hording them and if you have an organised folder system on your computer, then this will also help to improve system running and usability.
