Backup systems
Probably the easiest strategy to follow is to backup your data to a CD-RW on a daily basis, and then burn it to a CD-R once a week and move that copy off-site.
Backup Strategies
If it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. You'll turn on your computer, the hard drive will fail to turn on and you'll receive an error message about the lack of a boot device. Where is your data?
Industry statistics say that 60% of all small businesses who lose their data never open their doors again. Do you have your data backed up? Where would you be if it all disappeared in a puff of smoke? Do you have fire insurance for your business? If you do, but you don't have your data backed up, you are many times more likely to suffer from data loss as from a fire. Why pay for fire insurance and risk the whole enterprise on a cheap piece of hardware like a hard drive?
At the very least, you should copy important data from one computer, across the network, to another. If one computer dies, you still have the data on the other. Works great until you have a fire, flood, earthquake or theft. It is strongly recommended that you develop some strategy that moves the data off-premises at least once a week. If you have DSL at home and work, you can copy the data off the work computer to the home computer over the Internet -- as long as you are extremely careful about how you set up security to access your work computer. If you can get in from the Internet, a hacker might as well.
You can copy your data to tape, external USB/Firewire hard drive, CD-R, CD-RW (there are two kinds of CD's -- read only and read/write), Zip disk or other removable media and take the latest version off-site.
There are sites on the Internet where you can upload your data (usually at night when your computers are otherwise idle). These sites have excellent security and reduce or eliminate the hacker risk you have when you use the Internet to backup from home.
Of all the things we have tried, the external USB/Firewire hard drive seems to work best for most small businesses. These devices cost less than $200, are about the size of a hard-bound book, plug easily into just about any computer and usually include backup software. Get two of them and rotate. Schedule your weekly backup on Friday (or whenever), unplug it and take it home. Bring in the previous week's drive on Monday and plug it in. This way you'll always have the latest week's data offsite in case the worst happens. Once set up, you don't have to do anything more than drag a book-size box back and forth once a week.
Oh, and one more thing about USB/Firewire drives: Use the Firewire connection, not USB. Firewire is faster than USB2 and it uses less processing power from your CPU.
All of the above strategies will work. Some will work better than others. Most will only work if you actually follow the program. Whatever you do, set up something -- and follow it. Your business depends on it. VCC is here to help.
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