This month I'd like to run through some thoughts on a most mundane topic - data backup. It's one of those things that really is a bit of a waste of time .......... until we need to recover a lost file which has great financial implications for us. What could be so important ? Perhaps the payroll files from last week, perhaps a proposal which we have been preparing for a month and it is to be delivered tomorrow, perhaps our outstanding orders file, perhaps our email file. When you think of it, we have quite a bit of valuable data lying around that would be difficult to quickly recreate accurately.
Lets run through and ask ourselves a few question !!
What should we backup ?
I think it is almost a given that we agree that the key data in our office should be backed up in case we need it for something. That ‘something' may be as simple as we accidently deleted a file which we were working on or it could be that our server has been stolen and our business is at risk if we don't get our data back and available within a day or two.
Where would we find data ? Of course it would be on our server. What if we had more than one server ? What about PC's - I'd guess some people have data on their PC's ? How about laptops - they are likely candidates as people take work home on them. How about all those names, numbers, addresses and appointments on ones mobile phone ? Perhaps all of that data is valuable and should be backed up ?
Well that's the data side of things done. How about the software on our server or key PC's ? Perhaps we need to talk to our IT guys and see how quickly they could get all of our software loaded back if we had a glitch (and where would they find the disks) ? It may be worthwhile backup more than just data - how about once in a while we backup the whole server ? Perhaps we should backup key PC's as well ?
How often should we backup ?
This is a pretty simple question to answer. All we need to do is ask ourselves how much rekeying we would like to do AND do we actually have the documents to recreate all the lost data (e.g. inbound emails). I'd like to think that we would back up every day as a minimum and more often if possible.
When are IT things most likely to go wrong ? Answer - just shortly after we have made changes to our software, upgraded our accounting system, put in a new anti-virus program, etc. Might be a good idea to backup our data before we make a change of this nature, mightn't it ?
How do we backup ?
Well this is easy, we schedule a backup every night. It generally requires human intervention, not to run the backup, but to put in the tape / renew the removable disk or whatever we are doing. This is by far the largest area of failure with backups - humans. Make sure this is done religiously; else anything else we do is wasted.
Here is a little trick. Did you know that if a file is being used (someone left a program like word processing open) there is every chance that the file will not be backed up or its backup will be corrupted ? All files should be closed at the end of the day. This same rule applies to databases such as accounting packages, email and the like. There is sometimes specialised software that can get around this, but expect to pay two or three thousand dollars for it.
Well, that has been a bit to think about, hasn't it ?
My next blog will provide you with some strategies and options to lessen the risks, but no matter what, remember that it is very important to backup regularly and to back up all of your data.
