An interesting tale concerning the importance of online backup systems has highlighted the need for businesses to consider the importance of disaster recovery.

Two passengers on the infamous US Airways Flight 1549, which plunged into the Hudson River near Manhattan on January 15th this year, found that they had two very different outcomes after they realised they were both carrying extremely important information, reports USA Today.

Bill Wiley, who was carrying 250 gigabytes of data for his employer Computer Associates, lost the entirety of his data, with his computer presumably lying at the bottom of New York's most famous river.

However, with the benefit of foresight, fellow passenger Paul Jorgensen used an online backup plan in order to have his data safe and sound online, with his provider returning the information to him in no time.

It is a cautionary tale which many people may want to consider, even if planes do not drop out of the sky every day.

According to IT World, businesses should implement and regularly test disaster recovery systems in case of a major failure, as they will be able to restore systems much quicker.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to online backup.