Wednesday, December 26, 2007

I'm *pretty sure* I have a good backup...

The holidays are a great time to get together with family and friends, a time to catch up and give thanks, a time to share and reflect about the year that has gone by. Unless you are a naughty TECHIE, then the holidays are a time to madly scramble all hours of the night to restore a hard drive.

It was innocent enough at first. I had a project I'd been itching to do for a few months with my home computer and I had a few rare "extra" hours. A couple of cans of Red Bull into the project, I was at the point where I needed to repartition my hard drive. I remember sleepily thinking to myself, "If this goes wrong, I'm going to lose all the data on this hard drive. I'm pretty sure I have a good backup..."

And, of course, I wouldn't be writing about this unless something went wrong.

  • I'd love to tell you that as a TECHIE, I always practice what I preach.
  • I'd love to tell you that we help clients all the time with data recovery issues and I knew better.
  • I'd love to tell you that since we help our clients with backup solutions that just work, since we know how important it is to have a way to turn back the clock when things go wrong, I had a working backup.
I can't tell you any of that. What I can tell you is that I spent the better part of my long weekend - several late nights - un-deleting hidden partition tables, renaming directories and cataloging what couldn't be recovered and was lost for good. Backups are important. "I'm pretty sure I have a good backup" isn't good enough.


1. Without a backup, some things are lost forever
Off the top of your head, what are the cell phone numbers of your five biggest suppliers? What was the invoice number you sent out to your new client on May 1st? If your system crashes, you can rebuild the operating system. You can buy a new server. You can pay for most things to be replaced. But the data that is unique to your business? The information you have about your customers? That's one of a kind. If you lose that, you lose it forever.


2. You don't know when you'll need it
Whether your server gets fried by a lightning strike or a new employee accidentally deletes all of your vendor contact information, you can never be sure when or why you'll need a backup. But having a giant undo button -- getting everything back the way it was -- QUICKLY and COMPLETELY -- should help you sleep better at night. You insure your car. You insure your house. You even insure your teeth. Shouldn't you insure the information that keeps your business running?


3. Your data is much more valuable than the cost of a tape
Backups aren't cheap. They don't have to be expensive but they cost something. The information you have about your customers is what allows you to maintain a relationship with them and stay in business. That information is worth a lot. A lot more than the cost of a backup server and some storage tapes.


A good managed service provider can help ensure you are backing up your data and make it painless. A really good one will test that data from time to time to make sure your backup actually works. And if you somehow found today's post because, like me, you just had a disaster and didn't have a good backup, give your local TECHIE a call and see what they can do for you.



TECHIES is the IT Department for Small Business in the Twin Cities. If you've had an IT Disaster over the holidays, given us a call at 612.333.TECH.

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