What Cause Data Loss? | Common Causes of Data Loss

The data loss issue is a very common issue that always happens unexpectedly. Of course, if you know it, you will not let it happen. This is not an avoidable event. But if you know the common causes of data loss, you will know what to do to avoid such incidents as far as possible.

In this post, we will introduce the common reasons for data loss. Thus, you can pay attention to these things to reduce your loss.

Common Causes of Data Loss

In some cases, the lost data is still recoverable. In other cases, you are unable to restore the lost data because it is damaged or stolen by others, or overwritten by new data. You can get some hints from this part.

Human Error

When you use your computer, you may mistakenly operate something to delete your important files by accident. So, you can have a check before you delete files from your computer or other storage devices.

If the deleted files are moved to Recycle Bin, you can still restore them from Recycle bin. But if they are permanently deleted, you need to use Windows File Recovery Tool or third-party data recovery software to get them back.

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Viruses & Malware

When you click an unknown link from your email or another place, it may be embedded with viruses or malware. Or you may download software from an unauthorized website, it may contain viruses or malware. They can crash your computer or steal your information, causing data loss.

Drive Damage

Well, this is a disaster for your data loss. You may drop your laptop or data storage drive to the ground by accident, causing the device damaged. You can’t open the drive that saves your important files. If the drive is physically damaged, you will be unable to restore files in it.

This is not the thing you want. So, you need to take care of your computer or drive to keep them safe.

Power Outages

In most cases, you can get a power outage notification before a foreseeable blackout. But if an accident happens suddenly, your computer will shut down without warning. If you are still working on some documents without saving them, you may lose them. You can form a habit of saving your work documents at hand or set the application to automatically save your files.

Computer/Drive Theft

It is, unfortunately, if your computer or device is stolen by others. If so, you can try to find it back. If you can’t, you will lose all files on your computer or device. In a situation like this, a previous backup can be your last straw. You can restore your files to another device or a new computer from your previous cloud backup.

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Water Damage

This is also an accident. For example, if you put a cup of coffee or water next to your computer, you may accidentally knock it over. Your computer can be liquid damaged and become unbootable. You can ask a professional for help.

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, and rainstorms can damage your computer or storage device. They usually happen without warning. Due to this, a cloud data back is necessary.

Storage Drive Formatting

If you can’t open a storage device with an error message like you need to format the disk before you can use it, location is not available, file or directory is corrupted and unreadable, etc. You can format the drive to remove the error message.

However, formatting a drive can delete all files in the drive, making you lose all your data. Due to this, you can first use professional data recovery software, MiniTool Power Data Recovery, to rescue your files to a safe location and then format the drive.

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Software Corruption

Software corruption can manifest as software shut down unexpectedly, software no responding, software freezes your computer. In some cases, it can even corrupt your data or cause a power outage.

To avoid this issue, you need to close the software and your computer properly. Don’t force close them when it is not necessary to do this. You should also keep your software and Windows up-to-date.

OS Crash

Your Windows OS may not boot as normal when the operating system not found, the system partition is damaged, the system partition is marked as inactive, and so other reasons. Your misoperation can cause these problems. So, you should know what you are doing and the results when you make some changes on your computer.

You can use the professional partition manager, MiniTool Partition Wizard, to fix the problem and make your computer go back to normal. You can also use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to get back your files if necessary.

Bottom Line

Those are the main causes of data loss. We hope they can let you know what you can do and what you should not do to prevent data loss.

Besides, if the lost and deleted files are not overwritten by new data or the drive is not physically damaged, you can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to get them back.

To safeguard your data, you can also use MiniTool ShadowMaker, professional data backup software, to make a backup of your important data.

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You can use this software to back up your data to an external hard drive. When you lose your data by mistake, you can restore them from your previous backup files.