The recent flooding across the UK has highlighted how important it is for small businesses to have disaster recovery systems in place to protect their valuable IT data, an industry expert has said.

Bill Margeson, the chief executive of CBL Data Recovery Technologies, explained to thechannelshow.com that many firms had simply backed-up their data on external hard drives, but that these had also been damaged by flooding.

Few small firms had protected their data by outsourcing disaster recovery services to another company.

However, Mr Margeson added that skilled technicians could often recover data from even the most damaged systems.

He told the site: "You'd be surprised how much damage a computer hard drive can endure, yet many companies write off damaged data storage media prematurely."

After floods hit much of the country earlier this month, the Association of British Insurers, estimated that the total cost to businesses and consumers will exceed £1.5 billion.

"The recent flooding is a timely reminder that natural disasters do happen and even relatively simple precautions can help protect valuable data," concluded Mr Margeson.

Research for Connect in 2007 found that 88 per cent of UK businesses were interested in Disaster Recovery systems primarily to protect their critical applications and data.