Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York, stored her research data on a server in the basement of her home. During hurricane Sandy in 2012, her basement was flooded and she almost lost all of her data belonging to a mosquito genome project.

The story shows that unexpected events and catastrophes like hurricanes or fires can damage data storages at a location. Specialized buildings (e.g. IT centres) are generally better protected against such events than residential buildings and are therefore preferable for data storage. In general, data should be stored in accordance with the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies on two different storage media and one copy should be kept offsite. This reduces the risk of the destruction of all copies due to disasters at one location.