Google Data Loss: Company’s Data Centre In Europe Loses Precious Data To Bad Weather!

Aug 22, 2015 05:14 AM EDT

(Photo : Reuters) Early this week, search engine giant was in an embarrassing situation when one of its data centres in Belgium lost all the users data just because the local grid suffered the wrath of Mother Nature when it was struck by lightning four times in a row.

Early this week, search engine giant was in an embarrassing situation when one of its data centres in Belgium lost all the users data just because the local grid suffered the wrath of Mother Nature when it was struck by lightning four times in a row.

Users in Europe ended up losing access to some of their files permanently when one of the disks in Google's Belgium data centre ended up losing its data, BBC confirmed. The incident happened because the power grid controlling the affected grid was struck by lightning four times. Many other disks were also affected as a result of this condition; however, in all the others, power connections were restored easily and even users had access.

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Google was quick to respond to the situation and issued a clarification. The search engine giant said that most of its customers had recovered their lost data through various backup technologies.

Ideally, a data centre needs more protection than regular homes when it comes handling crucial information, claims the report. Google also pointed out that the lighting strucked the power grid and not the data centre directly.

Google allowed customers to store data on cloud via the Google Compute Engine. Justin Gale, project manager for the lightning protection service Orion, said that there was no clarity as to which clients were affected and to what extent. The report also quotes Google's online statement which says that barely .000001 percent of disk space was permanently affected as a result of the incident. Google's statement goes on to explain that the data systems are designed with battery back-ups, therefore only the recently written data was lost, Digital Trends reported. The company also said that it would work harder to introduce better updates and reduce the risk of future losses.

In another comment from data centre consultants of Future-Tech, it is revealed that data centres are not immune to the damage by lightning strikes in spite of being built to withstand them.

TagsGoogle data recovery, google data loss, google Europe