Released: June 12, 2006

Costly computer crashes

Source: By Stephanie Armour, USA Today

At first, Joan Horbiak just kept working. Then it became impossible. She could no longer access files on her computer. The screen was seizing up. Data she had just put into her laptop were vanishing like water through a sieve. Horbiak’s computer was crashing. A malfunctioning fan caused her hard drive to burn, and the communications consultant in Alexandria, Va., lost everything. Presentations. Personal files. E-mail.

“I was in a flood three years ago and lost my car, and this was scarier,” Horbiak says. “It was very dramatic. I lost almost everything.”

It took her three days and more than $6,500 in payments to computer data recovery experts to restore what she could.

Horbiak’s story illustrates a growing risk of doing business in today’s increasingly wired world.

Computers have become ubiquitous in business. The rise in the use of laptops means a greater chance for malfunctions, theft and loss. Laptops also are more likely to lose data due to accidental damage, such as dropping.

Secondly, more data are being stored in smaller spaces as hard drive capacity increases, according to a 2003 study at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles. That means that an enormous amount of business data can be stored on a single laptop.

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