Protecting Your Data From Fire and Water Damage

3/21/2022 (Permalink)

As leaders in the fire and water damage restoration industry, every day we come face to face with how easy it is for things to get lost, broken, or even completely destroyed by one of these events. People often consider how to protect their physical property in these events but without proper precautions it’s just as easy to lose your digital property as well. Family photos, digitized personal or work documents, movie and music collections, and any other important things in your life that are stored digitally can be lost in an instant if your computer suffers from fire, smoke, or water damage. It’s important to make sure that you’re backing up your data to help keep it safe. Below are some of the different ways that you can achieve this goal and safeguard your digital property.

CDs & DVDs – CDs or compact discs, have been used for quite a while as a means to store things like music and movies. They’re a decent solution for small amounts of files if you can keep them organized and safe. The biggest issue with CDs is that they are very limited in storage space so large amounts of files can be difficult to manage as the number of discs stack up every time you make a new one. Additionally, discs degrade overtime, and the data can be corrupted or lost if not properly stored. CD backups are an older solution that can work in a pinch but is not recommended as your main backup source.

USB or external hard drive – These options are a much easier and more portable solution for backing up your personal data. USB sticks are often not more than a few inches long and quick to be able to stick in your pocket and external hard drives are not much bigger but can hold even more data on them. As technology improves the storage space on both of these devices continues to increase. The drawback for using these as your backup source is that unless it’s stored somewhere other than your home, it also faces the chance of being susceptible to fire and water damage.

Cloud Storage – While not technically a new concept, cloud storage is growing in popularity as a means to secure your data. Solutions like Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive have made keeping your data backed up and accessible as easy as it’s ever been. Cloud storage also has the added bonus that your data is stored offsite, so even if your computer is completely destroyed, all of the data that you’ve backed up is still completely safe and accessible by basically any device with an internet connection. Many companies offer small amounts of storage for free, but you can also pay to scale up your storage to whatever needs you may have.

While data backups are the ideal way to protect your digital property, sometimes it’s not feasible, or even your backup was damaged. That’s why here at SERVPRO of Chesterfield and SERVPRO of Tri-Cities, Plus we also offer contents restoration. Our highly trained team of restoration experts can help to try and restore the items in your home to pre loss conditions instead of just throwing out anything that was damaged. This also includes electronics. We will bring them back to our warehouse to be disassembled and cleaned according to best practices. While some items may be more damaged than we can fix, SERVPRO’s contents restoration services can save some electronics that otherwise would have been considered lost.