Updated on November 24th, 2020
Data loss may happen at any time, and have you ever paid attention to data loss reasons? Here is a survey which explains reasons causing data loss.
| Cause of data loss | Perception | Reality |
| Hardware or system problem | 70% | 50% |
| Human error | 19% | 33% |
| Software corruption or problem | 4% | 8% |
| Computer viruses | 5% | 7% |
| Disaster | 2-3% | 2-3% |
The numbers don’t add up due to rounding errors.
From the statistics we can see what’s interesting is that people are tend to blame computer instead of ourselves. Actually, human error takes bigger percentage of data loss than what we’re willing to admit.
Hardware and system tends to more reliable them human, so to avoid data loss, we should try to avoid human errors.
Anyway, the most effective way to avoid data loss is to backup your computer. Here is an article shows all the possible approaches of backing up a computer How to Backup a Computer .