Data Safety: The Importance of Back-Ups
People can be strange creatures, regardless of how many times you warn them about a risk, they will still go their own way until it finally goes wrong! Only then do they realize what you've been cautioning them about.
One fine example of this, is making backups of your documents, e-mail, music, pictures and other files. I myself, someone who should know better, has made the mistake of underestimating the risks of not having a backup and losing critical data. One of my most important duties at my job, is guaranteeing the safety of the organisations data, by making daily backups and replicating data to other physical locations using costly equipment intended for this job.This process is safeguarded by procedures and automated to a level that human involvement isn't always required.
In your private life or in small businesses the situation is different, you're always in a hurry or busy working your small business and backups tend to be forgotten about. Particularly when you're location independent and you work from anywhere, you're not always up to date with your backups due to practical reasons.
This might have severe consequences for your organization. Imagine you had 20 clients last month, all with different purchases and you recorded all invoice data in your accounting software. Before you sent the invoices, you decide to go on a trip for a few days and when you come back, your computer is stolen or your accounting software database is virus ridden. If you can't access your invoice data, can you recollect all specifics of the 20 customers and create new invoices? You can guess, but what happens if you think you worked 20 hours for the client, and they know that you merely worked 10? I don't think that client is going to be rendering your services anymore. Bottom line: you will lose money! Either by losing customers or by working overtime to make up for the lost data.
Maybe you make use of hosted (accounting) software and depend upon your vendor to create backups! I like to recommend that you inquire if they have a service level agreement (SLA) for guaranteeing dependable backups that you can access at all times. Because what is the use of a backup if you can't access and restore it when you want?
I'm sure everybody made this kind of mistake once or twice and misplaced an essential document and brought on a lot of stress:) Generally this is caused by too much optimism: "This won't happen to me, I know what I'm doing, so I don't need backups" or it is caused by a lack of knowledge or skills to make a backup. Primary reasons of data-loss:
My advice is as follows:
For personal use I would suggest:
For business use I would suggest to talk to a local IT shop for advice. The costs of a backup solution don't compare to the costs of data loss!
One fine example of this, is making backups of your documents, e-mail, music, pictures and other files. I myself, someone who should know better, has made the mistake of underestimating the risks of not having a backup and losing critical data. One of my most important duties at my job, is guaranteeing the safety of the organisations data, by making daily backups and replicating data to other physical locations using costly equipment intended for this job.This process is safeguarded by procedures and automated to a level that human involvement isn't always required.
In your private life or in small businesses the situation is different, you're always in a hurry or busy working your small business and backups tend to be forgotten about. Particularly when you're location independent and you work from anywhere, you're not always up to date with your backups due to practical reasons.
This might have severe consequences for your organization. Imagine you had 20 clients last month, all with different purchases and you recorded all invoice data in your accounting software. Before you sent the invoices, you decide to go on a trip for a few days and when you come back, your computer is stolen or your accounting software database is virus ridden. If you can't access your invoice data, can you recollect all specifics of the 20 customers and create new invoices? You can guess, but what happens if you think you worked 20 hours for the client, and they know that you merely worked 10? I don't think that client is going to be rendering your services anymore. Bottom line: you will lose money! Either by losing customers or by working overtime to make up for the lost data.
Maybe you make use of hosted (accounting) software and depend upon your vendor to create backups! I like to recommend that you inquire if they have a service level agreement (SLA) for guaranteeing dependable backups that you can access at all times. Because what is the use of a backup if you can't access and restore it when you want?
I'm sure everybody made this kind of mistake once or twice and misplaced an essential document and brought on a lot of stress:) Generally this is caused by too much optimism: "This won't happen to me, I know what I'm doing, so I don't need backups" or it is caused by a lack of knowledge or skills to make a backup. Primary reasons of data-loss:
- Harddisk/hardware failure (Yes and this also occurs with new computers!)
- Accidentally overwritten a document (by older version)
- Accidentally deleted a file or folder AND emptied the Recycle Bin
- Laptop gets stolen Personal computer gets infected by a malware and an "IT uncle" gets rid of the infections as well as your data!
- Files get corrupted by a crashing computer program or operating system and so on
My advice is as follows:
For personal use I would suggest:
- Backup your important files using an online backup service, like Sugarsync, Mozy or Dropbox
- If you have large amounts of data, buy an external USB drive or NAS that includes good backup software
- Schedule a backup daily or weekly otherwise steps 1 and 2 are almost useless.
For business use I would suggest to talk to a local IT shop for advice. The costs of a backup solution don't compare to the costs of data loss!
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