Newbury Business Today

Why you need a back-up strategy

13th March 2008

Email: richard.maynard@newburynews.co.uk

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Charles Zealey, of ITSolve, on business and personal computing.

I suppose that for all of us there is one thing above all others that we hate doing. For me it is telling a customer that the disk on which they have been happily storing their files has failed and that it is not possible, or uneconomic, to recover the information.
Whether the files contain critical business information or treasured memories, the impact can be devastating.
That is why anyone in my position runs the  risk of boring you to death at parties with dire warnings about the need for back-ups – not only because of the very real probability of disk failure (it is certain that every disk will fail sooner or later), but also because of the possibility of accidental (or deliberate) deletion, corruption, virus infection, theft or fire damage.
How often should you back-up? Probably more often than you think.
Ask yourself the simple question: What would happen if you lost all the information you have stored since you last took a back-up?
If that frightens you, back-up more frequently.
The means of backing up varies according to circumstances and the amount of data involved.
You can use CD, DVD, tape, hard drives, as well as other options.
You may need to take some advice here. Don’t be afraid of multiple back-up.
Internet back-up services are becoming very popular because they are off-site and can often   be automated.
If you have an operating system that supports either shadow copies or versions, then use those.
They are no substitute for back-ups, but provide a useful first line of defence.
It is well worth spending some time making sure that you have everything you need backed-up. Email? Application data? Databases? Calendars? Contact lists? In some cases, for example databases or e-mail systems, you may need to use specialised software to ensure that you have a back-up that is consistent. Check with your IT provider.
Finally, don’t forget to check from time to time that you can actually recover files from the back-ups.
Ideally, you could completely rebuild the system from back-ups, but you may find these to be too expensive.
So, please spend some time thinking and planning your back-up strategy. That way, I won’t have to break the bad news to you.

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