– Now’s a Good Time to Organise Backup for Your Essential Files
How many hours do you spend in front of the computer each week typing up documents or entering tax information? So how many seconds do you spent backing up this data each week? I have previously written 4 articles on the importance of a good backup system so at the risk of boring you this is number 5. Unfortunately it is human nature that while things are going well a lackadaisical attitude often sets in of “it won’t happen to me”! Next thing your hard drive has died or your laptop was stolen and it has been 6 months since your last backup. What now? Well, six months of bookkeeping has gone, six months of emails, six months of documents and also possibly a heap of irreplaceable photos. This can be in the least, quite depressing and in the extreme it can totally ruin a business.
We also see a lot of people going out and buying an external hard drive for backups. This normally ends in two main problems. 1- Some people put the ONLY copy of their data on these backup drives or 2- Some people use the backup software that comes with these drives. Both cases usually result in disaster. In the first instance these backup drives are also subject to failure themselves and they can be lost or stolen. Basically if you are going to store data electronically then you need to always have it on two devices in two separate locations. You should have enough storage room on your computer to keep the original copy of your data as well as keeping a duplicate on an external backup drive. This offers at least a good level of protection.
In the second instance the majority of backup software that comes with external hard drives is the sort that wants to back up your entire computer – user data, windows software and all program files. This normally takes hours to run and as a result how often are you going to go through this process? A good backup system needs to be comprehensive (capturing all user data), simple to operate (or it won’t get done), fast to work (or it won’t get done often enough) and able to be verified (or it may not be running properly). In the past we have also seen people backing up just the shortcut or icon to a tax package and none of the actual data – thinking that they were safe!
As an example we have developed software which meets with all of the above criteria and takes around 30 seconds to complete! We sell and install this software for $120 using your own backup drive or supply a backup drive to suit. Ask anyone who has lost all of their data and you will soon hear that a couple of hundred dollars invested in a good backup solution is “a pittance to pay for peace of mind”! We also suggest the same system for laptop users – providing that they always store the backup drive separately in case of theft. Our range of backup solutions for businesses starts at the above level and goes all the way to providing a fully automated, managed and monitored daily off site backup solution to our service centre here in Rockhampton.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 07 49 222 400.
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