The Net Result- Consider This

Backup your Data

The most important component of your computer is the data that is stored on it. Unfortunately, many people don't give their data much thought until a crisis occurs. According to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC: "93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period files for bankruptcy immediately."

At The Net Result, we take data protection very seriously. Hardware can be replaced and software can be reinstalled but priceless data that is lost is gone forever. Fortunately, there are methods you can employ to safeguard your information and make sure your company doesn't become a statistic. If you have not yet developed a strategy for safeguarding and recovering your data in the event of a disaster, you should start right now! Following is a simple overview of the 4 steps you should take to protect your information and yourself.

Organize Your Data. It's difficult, if not impossible to have a backup plan if you don't know where your information is located. In the "old" days of DOS, users would store their files any place they could, usually at the "root" of the hard disk or on a floppy disk. Many people were never really clear on just where the information went and didn't worry about it until they couldn't find it. when Microsoft introduced Windows 95, one of the features was the "My Documents" folder. This was to be a unified location for all of the data a user might produce on their computer. Most Windows compatible software today will select the "My Documents" folder (or a subfolder) as the default location to save to. This is a good place to start with your backups. Of course, there are still some programs, such as Intuit's Quicken, that do not follow the convention of storing the user data in the "My Documents" folder. However, with the built in data backup utilities in such programs, you can store the backup data file(s) in the "My Documents" folder.
The next step is to Develop a Plan for your data protection. There are many different ways you can back up your data. Once you have your information organized and in a convenient location, determine your strategy and the tools you plan to use to put it into action. In the simplest terms, a manual backup can be accomplished by just copying your data from one location to another. The frequency of your backup depends on how quickly your data changes and also on your own level of paranoia (or security). The following table illustrates some of the available hardware suitable for backups and their relative merits.

Backup Media	Advantage	Disadvantage
3 ½” Floppy Disk	Inexpensive Physically small size	Only 1.44 MB Very susceptible to wear Becoming much less common
USB “Thumb Drive”	Inexpensive Physically small size Can hold up to 4 GB (or more) Convenient	Not easy to label Can be lost Can fail or “go bad” Older computers might not have a USB port
CD-ROM	Inexpensive Can hold 640 MB Convenient Most computers have a CD Drive	Scratch easily Once written, can not be used again (write once) Deteriorate with age
CD-RW	Inexpensive Can hold 640 MB Can Re-write Convenient Most computers have a CD Drive	Scratch easily Will not play in all drives Deteriorate with age
DVD- R/RW	Inexpensive Can hold 4.7 GB (double layer can hold 8.5 GB) Convenient	Scratch easily Will not play in all drives Deteriorate with age
External Hard Drive	Fast Large capacity- up to 1TB Self- contained Portable	Comparatively expensive It’s still a hard drive Not always easy to take off site
Tape Drive	Good for archiving- multiple copies Easy to take tapes off site	Drives/ tapes can be expensive Tapes wear out Some drives require frequent cleaning
On-Line Backup	Convenient Reliable No media to handle Less human intervention once set up	Slow data connection can impede backup Give up sole control of your files Usually expensive- monthly charge Can not recover data without internet connection

This is only a sample of the possible options available. If you are on a network you can backup your files to a network file server (which is then usually backed up to tape).

On a home network (more than 1 computer in the household) you can set up a workgroup and enable sharing between the computers. With this arrangement, you can backup your files using a “round robin” approach- Computer 1 copies its files to computer 2; computers 2 copies to computer 3; and computer 3 copies to computer 1. The odds of having 2 computers fail simultaneously being somewhat slim.

Once you have decided what type of media to use for your backup, you then need to determine how your data is going to get backed up. You can perform a file copy manually on a regular basis, use software that is usually bundled with various devices, use Windows Backup, or purchase specialized software for automated backups.

This leads into the third step of developing a backup plan, which is Make it Easy. If it's a complicated or time-consuming procedure, the odds are that you'll eventually stop doing it. The Net Result usually recommends automating as much of the procedure as possible. The only portion that the user should have to contend with on a regular basis is making sure the backup occurred.

Test Your Backup. You need to periodically verify that your backup is running and that the media on which the backup is stored is usable and that data can indeed be restored from it. Unless you can actually recover a file from your backup set and restore it to its original location, you can not assume that your backups are good. Do not necessarily rely on the backup log files to indicate a successful backup. We have seen times where the data has been corrupted and rendered unusable, even though the backup software indicates otherwise.

We here at The Net Result can not emphasize strongly enough how important a good backup is to your continued operation and success. If you would like help in developing your plan, please feel free to get in touch with us and we can work with you on a solution that you can be comfortable with.

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