4 Ways to Prevent Data Loss on Your Windows Computer

What is Data Corruption? Symptoms and Causes

Data corruption refers to errors that occur during the writing, reading, transmission, storage, or processing of computer data, causing unintended changes to the original information. When data corruption happens, systems or applications attempting to access files containing this data can suffer severe consequences, ranging from minor data loss to critical system crashes.

What happens when data corruption occurs? Some common symptoms of data corruption include:

1. The disk is running slowly or becoming unresponsive. 2. Files are receiving "invalid file format" errors. 3. File and folder locations are missing or lost. 4. The computer is crashing or hanging frequently without apparent reason. 5. Disk operations appear very busy, even though there aren't many actions being performed.

Data corruption can significantly impact the information on your computer, so it's crucial to understand the reasons for data corruption in Windows-based systems. Here are some causes of data corruption on your computer:

1. Viral attacks and computer worms can corrupt your data. 2. A hard drive failure can lead to data corruption. 3. Incorrectly saving a file can result in data corruption. 4. Pulling out a storage device improperly from a computer can also harm your data. 5. Certain sectors on a disk might become problematic, leading to damaged files and folders.

Three Strategies for Protecting Your Data on Windows PCs

Data corruption is now a common cause of data loss. So it pays to know how to prevent it. Here are three ways to protect the information on your computer from damage.

• Correctly eject external hard drives from your computer
• Use antivirus software on Windows computers and keep it up to date
• Monitor the health of your hard drive

Eject an External Hard Drive Properly from Your Computer

You shouldn't just yank it out, because you never know if a program is writing to a file. This can corrupt your files. It's a good idea to eject the hard drive before removing it, so that when you unplug it, the software won't be using any data on the drive, and you won't lose anything.

Install and regularly update antivirus software on your Windows computer.

Viruses and malware are constantly evolving, and they're a major cause of data corruption, changing files from their original form into something that an application or your computer can no longer recognize. This is why having antivirus software on your computer is so important. First, you need a reputable security suite that includes the best antivirus software, firewall, and other layers of protection. Second, if you use email, get to know email viruses, so you can prevent them from corrupting your data.

Keep an eye on your hard drive's health Hard drive health

While it's good practice to regularly check for hard drive errors and bad sectors, it's also important to keep an eye on your hard drive's health so you're not caught off guard by unexpected failures. One way is to use S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to monitor your hard drive's status and receive warnings of potential failure. Another method is to use the disk scanning tool in the Windows operating system.

Check Hard Drive Health

A Comprehensive Approach to Data Integrity

The above three methods need more time and effort from users because they all require performing manually. Fortunately, with the help of a third-party backup tool, such as tools Todo Backup, you can easily create file or system backups to prevent data loss.

Todo Backup Home is a professional and user-friendly backup software that helps you automatically back up files, system, hard drives, partitions, and more. It also supports creating various types of backups, including full backup, differential backup, incremental backup, and scheduled tasks, saving the backups to multiple locations. It enables you to clone a hard drivedisk cloning and create a recovery partitionrecovery partition creation. Most importantly, it offers 250GB of free cloud storage space to meet your diverse storage needs and ensure data security.

### Guide: How to Create File Backups Using Professional Backup Software

You can create a backup of your files on your computer by following these steps.

Step 1. To begin the backup process, click the Select what to back up button.

Step 2: There are four types of backup data you can select: Files, Disks, Operating System (OS), and Email (Mail).

Step 3: The pane on the left displays a list of folders on your computer and network. Click to expand the folders and select the files you want to back up.

4. Follow the on-screen instructions to choose where you want to save your backup file.

Make sure the backup is encrypted, and set the time for backups under “Backup Settings” by clicking the “Options” button. You can also set a specific time for backups to start by clicking the “Backup Schedule” “Options” button. There are many other customizable options you can explore as well.

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5. You can save the backup file to your computer, tools cloud service, or a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.

Step 6: Todo Backup lets users store their backup files on third-party cloud storage or their own servers.

To back up your data to a third-party cloud storage, choose “Local Drive,” then scroll down and add a “Cloud Device.” Enter your account information.

Then tap Cloud Backup, and sign in to your Evernote account if you want to store the backup in Evernote's cloud service.

Then click “Back Up Now” to start the backup process. When it's done, it will appear in the left pane. Right-click it for more options on how to manage this backup job in greater detail.

A Better Way to Secure Data

Data corruption is one of the most common computer errors that can happen to any computer user. Your system and application data is priceless. As they say, prevention is better than cure. Hence, you should try to protect your data before it's too late. You can perform any of the above methods to avoid data corruption.

We recommend using one of the four methods introduced in this article,Todo Backup, to prevent data corruption. It can easily help you solve the problem of data damage by backing up all files on your computer and saving the backups to the cloud and other locations for better data protection. Give it a try – it won't disappoint you!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I check if data is corrupted?

From the “Main Menu,” select “System Settings,” then scroll down the options on the left and choose “Data Management.” On the right, select “Manage Software,” then choose the game you want to check. Finally, select “Check for Corrupted Data.”

What does a compromised file look like?

A corrupted file may not open, or it may display as gibberish. But that does not mean that the program itself is corrupted. If one Word document will not open, others probably will.

3. Why the downloaded file is damaged?

The file you download may get corrupted due to a conflict between IDM and some other application, such as a firewall, antivirus, or internet security program that controls the downloading process or writes data to the disk.

4. How to fix corrupted files in Windows 10?

Here are the steps to fix corrupted files in Windows 10. First, open Command Prompt as an administrator by searching for "cmd" or "Command Prompt" in the Start menu. Next, type the command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and press Enter. Now, wait for the repair process to complete 100%.