This is the second article in the “Backup and Restore (or Recovery) in SQL Server” stairway series (see the full TOC below). This article deals with the different phases of data management life cycle and it encompasses the following topics:
- Introduction to data corruption
- Defining data corruption and its causes
- Discussion on the impact of data corruption
- Explaining data prevention mechanisms
- Data protection
- And more…
Introduction to Data Corruption
Data is said to be corrupted when it attains an undesirable state different from the original data. Data corruption also refers to data errors that can occur during any of the stages of data writing, data processing or even reading, at the storage, or during transmission.
We all know that at the very core, data is nothing but a series of 1s and 0s. When data is written, what actually happens is that the 1s and 0s are written to the destination. This sequence of 1s and 0s is interpreted during the data reading operation, giving it some meaning. If these bits don’t get written in the intended sequence, the data is said to have been corrupted.
Small data means smaller sequences and relatively lower chances of corruption. When the amount of data increases, the chances of corruption also increases. The chances are particularly high when data generation is high, and the subsequent storage operations hit unprecedented rates.
Some of the most common reasons for data corruption include hardware or software issues with regard to I/O subsystems.
Causes of Data Corruption
- Hardware issues or failures
- Memory issues
- Power failure or outages
- I/O subsystem
- SAN controllers
- RAID controllers
- Disk drivers
- Bad sectors on the disks
- Operating System errors
- Virus attacks
- Antivirus, defraggers, even data encryption,
- SQL Server bugs
- Human errors
- Improper shutdown
- Hard reset
Further reading SQL Server Data Management Life Cycle
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