A new survey sponsored by Retrospect (www.retrospect.com), makes of Retrospect Backup & Recovery software, finds that more than half of small businesses have suffered data loss, through accident, loss, failure, theft, or disaster. The survey was conducted with Google Consumer Surveys across a sample of 1,000 small businesses.
 
The survey respondents reported accidents to be the most common form of data loss at 36%. Behind that, they reported loss at 21%, theft at 15%, disaster at 7%, and other at 6%. Under “Other,” respondents included “drive failure,”manufacturer erasing the hard drive during a warranty repair” and “employees doing things they shouldn’t.” And with the ability to select more than one form of data loss, 2% reported that they were unlucky enough to suffer from all four types.
 
According to a Gartner research group study of companies experiencing a “major loss” of computer records, 43% of companies were immediately put out of business, and another 51% permanently closed their doors within two years. Only 6% lasted longer than two years.
 
Even without a major loss of data, employee downtime is a costly result of any data loss situation. The Retrospect survey revealed that, for the last data loss event, 29% of respondents had employee downtime of 1 to 8 hours; 21% had employee downtime of 8 to 40 hours; and, an astonishing 7% had employee downtime of over 40 hours. Just among the 1,000 small businesses surveyed, they lost two and a half years of employee productivity.
 
Mitigating this, 54% of small businesses back up every day. According to the survey, 28% of respondents back up continuously; 26% back up daily; 17% back up weekly; and, 11% back up monthly. Only 17% of small businesses do not utilize any data protection.