The most recent Texas fire season lasted 378 days, and was still going strong when the year ended. The Texas Forest Service officially closed the books on the 2011 season, with a record $337 million in damages, but the season was still burning strong until recent weeks. While February has seen a reduction in the number of fires and a “low-to-moderate” risk of fire danger in the state, experts at the Texas Forest Service are predicting a long, hot, dry fire season across Texas in 2012, as well. The data recovery specialists at 24 Hour Data have seen data loss from all types of events: accidental deletions, dropped hard drives, floods and natural disasters. There are few data loss causes more heartbreaking than a home or business fire.

 a commercial making the rounds right now, where a groom is getting ready for his wedding and, rather than offering him the typical well wishes, people tell him, “You're going to lose it all today.” He hears this from his father, his best man, and even the limo driver. You begin to wonder what they mean as the look of trepidation on the groom's face begins to grow. The tagline bears the message that data loss occurs without warning; you never know when or where it may happen. This is absolutely true but, like other disasters, including natural disasters like hurricanes, floods or fires, there are ways you can be prepared for data loss caused by hard drive failure or other events. You can't tell exactly when data loss may occur, but here are three ways to make sure you're not caught completely blindsided when it does happen -- and can possibly prevent the complete loss of your mission critical data, whether it's important operating and financial files for your business or simply your family photos (including those wedding pictures!)

As VMware grows in popularity, so do replication processes and applications. Like a RAID server that relies on redundancy, replicating the data on your virtual machine is one form of on-site back-up. The ease with which you can replicate data from one virtual machine to another, creating an easy-to-access back-up, makes virtual machines more secure and less susceptible to the need for emergency data recovery.  However, to get the most out of your virtual server, you'll want to follow virtual machine replication best practices. 1- Make sure a dedicated network connects your production and disaster recovery site so that you can access your data in the event of virtual machine failure and data recovery emergency.  2 - Make sure replication is completed frequently, so you'll always have up to date back-ups available in the event of an emergency. VmWare vSphere's new vStorage APIs for Data Protection offer nearly continuous data protection (CDP).