Results:
Following on from a survey I posted back in June, see below, designed to
help make decisions about data vitality and importance to individuals and
organisations, as well as find out a little bit more about the
relationship between the importance of data types and their size, I have
some results to publish. The survey was exclusive to Hants Lug and
deliberately kept low key and has been a very useful exercise even though
the number of participants has been relatively small - but very good for
such a small readership, quality not quantity.
Thanks to those that took part and those that provided feedback and
constructive criticism also thanks to HL ML readers for living with the
thread. I will now design a new survey with some sort of incentive and
float this to a much larger audience. The results I have are enough to
incorporate a DIAP (R) decision matrix on the project website.
6 Participants:
Question 1)
Rate FIVE of these DATA TYPES if they were lost completely how best
describes the effect to your users (and or yourself) organisation or home
occupants.
Results:
*total damage - cost crippling - traumatic
2 [participants specified] Documents
1 Presentations
1 Photographs
1 Email boxes on a server
2 Code repository
1 Website code
*massive damage high cost - devastating
1 Spreadsheets
1 .txt files
1 Email boxes on a server
*major damage very costly - extremely upsetting
1 pdf documents
1 Photographs
*significant damage - significant cost very upsetting
1 Spreadsheets
2 Accounting Software data
1 Photographs
1 server configuration files
1 music files
1 Virtual machine images
*damage expensive - annoying
1 Documents
1 pdf documents
1 MS .pst file
1 Email boxes on a server
1 music files
1 ISO images
1 Virtual machine images
1 Code repository
Question 2)
Size the FIVE choices you made in the previous question
Results:
1-100 MB 8 items
>100 MB - 500 MB 1 item
>500 MB - 1 GB 8 items
>1 GB - 10 GB 8 items
>10 GB - 50 GB 0 items
>50 GB - 100 GB 2 items
> 100 GB 1 item
So from just this small pilot survey I can deduce qualitatively with
reasonable certainly that importance of data, subjective to the individual
or organisation, does not depend heavily on the data type.
That importance of data in relation to file size is loosely inversely
proportional. So the most important files are generally the smallest in
size. This is very encouraging information for the DIAP (R) project.
Thanks again to readers and participants.
-------------snip June 08-------------------------------------------------
> Identifying what data is important to you as an individual or your
> organisation is *hard* and [orgaisation (individual) specific] therefore
> the answer needs a some thought. Depending on 'value' placed on data and
> the 'value' if the data was completely lost; financial cost of recovery,
> time, damage or emotional cost or a mixture of these are the consequence.
--
Damian L Brasher
http://www.diap.org.uk - Quick and low-cost way to make an environment
more robust by backing up data in multiple places.
