Article > Vacation Data Disasters

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Vacation Data Disasters

Vacation data disasters! How often we have heard about this. People go out on a lovely holiday, take ample photographs. Later, they look forward to viewing it in leisure to recreate the magical ambience of the holidays enjoyed. Just imagine what a disaster it would be if their camera were to be stolen? Indeed, this is a regular experience many tourists face. For, majority of the tourist destinations around the world have professional thieves on prowl who specialise in stealing costly cameras or other electronic devices.

Prevent Theft 

To prevent such unpleasant experiences while on a holiday, keep the mobile storage device firmly strapped to your body. Deceive robbers, by putting your costly equipment it in a dull old cover. Insure your camera. Insurance helps you claim the amount if it is stolen.

Transfer all the photographs you take on to a CD and place it carefully. The priceless photographs would be safe even if the devices are lost or stolen. You can also use your laptop instead of a CD as a storage device if you have taken it to work on vacations. These would prove to be a better storage media. However, you have to take good care of your laptops.  

Lost Laptops and Mobile Devices

Laptops and other handy electronic items get lost or misplaced easily. London airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, receives 120 unclaimed laptops every month. During days of heightened security the number trebles. The quantum of other mobile devices (cameras, cell phones) lost is proportionately same. More data is lost by misplaced or lost mobile devices than by data transfer. Such loss can only be accounted to extreme user carelessness.  

You should always remember to place your laptop and other mobile devices in their respective covers and hold it firmly while travelling.  Your devices may be insured and you can claim the insurance money. But what about the data they hold, they would be permanently lost.

At times, care taken to the extremes also has a damaging impact. Some people are also known to carefully keep their expensive electronic devices in the wrong places.  

Wrong Placement of Portable Electronic Device

Tourists make two common mistakes. They are either to careful or extremely careless. Some carefully place their camera or laptop in the car before they go out sight seeing. The closed doors of the car raise temperatures and humidity levels to a great extent. This has a great damaging impact on the devices and the data they contain. The other sect of tourists who are careless, take the camera out with them to shoot photographs irrespective of the chill or snow.  

Whenever you go out on a holiday, remember to place the expensive electronic good in a good portable bag. If you are planning to leave you laptop in the car, cover it up with a towel. If you are walking out in the snow clicking pictures, shade your camera. This protects both your camera and the photographs they contain.

Improper Handling  

Protection of your devices is of utmost important when you go out on a holiday. How many of you would not have experienced the numbing feeling of the camera slipping off your hand in a moment of carelessness. Crashed, broken cameras, run over laptops are the devices that data recovery experts sometimes work on, at the data recovery centre. Quite frequently, it is the data that is more valuable than the device. It is always necessary to invest in a good foam padded bag while out on a holiday. Even if your laptop or camera slips and crashes to the ground the padded bag offer enough protection

Create a Backup 

Finally, create a backup of all the data you create. Transfer you photographs or company data onto a CD and also a USB thumb drive. You can also think of emailing yourself the data that needs protection.

Universal Adapter 

When you take your laptop out you would also need a universal adapter to plug it in and begin working in any location around the world. It would also not be a bad idea to buy a power surge protector. Electric fluctuations are a possible probability in some countries. These two devices are enough to protect your laptop.  

These varied measures must help prevent vacation data disasters. Almost all data disasters are user mistakes. A little care can go a long way in proper protection. Malicious damage is a lesser, but significant , factor and there are computer forensics (or digital forensics) specialists who  can examine drives and determine whether there has been foul play.

Article: Vacation Data Disasters

Created on: 2007-08-22 09:24:34