The Importance of Data Backups

All computers and their components are subject to failure. In fact sooner or later every business will be confronted with some type of computer failure. The largest threat to businesses during a failure will be some type of data loss or data corruption. While the causes of data loss and data corruption vary, not all are easily fixed.

When a data loss or data corruption occurs, many times the only option is to restore the data from a previously created backup of the affected data. Many businesses today over look the importance of data backups until they suffer the unexpected loss or corruption of valuable data. Once this occurs it would be too late, unless the business is lucky enough to restore the data by physically recreating all the affected files from scratch. This of course is only possible if they have a hard copy or another source from which to recreate the data. It will also cost the business a valuable amount of man hours in recreating the data as well. That is if they are lucky enough to be able to even recreate the data in the first place.

If your business has made backups of all data stored on the hard drives, restoring that data will go much more quickly and require a lot less effort. It will also require a lot less man hours and tears shed over the loss that has occurred.

Today there are many options available to businesses for storing and backing up their data. Some of the options available are tape drives and tape libraries, CD-R's and CD-RW's to DVD technologies. There is also the option to use NAS (Network Area Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Networks) and even remote backups over the internet. Even Windows XP/Server 2003 offers a restore point in case your system becomes corrupted. Of course just having these tools available to you is not enough. They need to be used properly and on a continuous basis to be effective.

Sooner or later all systems will face some type of failure that will require a restore from backup. The point is to perform those backups so they are there when you need them.

It is recommended that you sit down with your systems administrator to create a backup plan for your business immediately if you have not done so already. Also recommended, is that you review your backup plan yearly as well. When discussing your backup plan there are certain options to consider. Such as how often to perform the backups and what type of backup media is best suited for your business. Depending on your type of business and how much your data changes from day to day you may want to perform backups weekly, daily, or several times per day. For most small to mid-sized businesses I would recommend a full backup once per week with incremental backups at the end of each work day.

You will also want to consider whether or not to keep some of your backups off site in the case your business is affected by some type of natural or man made disaster. In addition you may also want software to monitor your backup process in order to ensure that your backups are not corrupted as well. This is a common experience with some types of backup media as well.

Finally you may also want to perform a system restore on an occasional basis so that you can check the effectiveness of the restoration process that you have set in place and to practice it so it goes as smoothly as possible.

Following these steps may be essential to your business continuity should your systems fail and you suffer a loss or corruption of data. Setting up a backup plan as well as a restoration plan will also go a long way in ensuring your business operations if you run into a system failure. This would help establish a "who is to do what" list if your systems should fail.

Failing to backup your business data, especially mission critical data is nothing short of a recipe for disaster. Nothing is as important to your business as the data that sits on the hard drives of your systems.

Copyright, Keith Erwood, Dynamic Network Technologies, © 2005 All Rights Reserved

Keith Erwood is the head consultant and owner of Dynamic Network Technologies, a computer consulting and services business in New York City. Visit us at Dynamic Network Technologies

More Resources

Unable to open RSS Feed $XMLfilename with error HTTP ERROR: 404, exiting

More Data Recovery Information:

Related Articles

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Reducing Your Risk Profile
Like all plans, there is an ultimate goal to achieve. The goal in a business continuity plan is simply that: to continue your business in the face of a disaster or a disruption.
Do You Have The One Key Ingredient Necessary For Disaster Recovery?
It is not rocket science, we all know that we should have a disaster recovery plan in place for our business regardless of its size. When disaster strikes, it seldom discriminates on the size of the company.
Data Recovery The Easy Way
If you aren't prepared in advance, you will most likely have to use a data recovery service or data recovery software solution to help get back as much as you can of what was lost. This can be a very good idea if there is no other way to recover your files, but it doesn't have to come to that in most cases.
Avoiding Hard Disk Data Recovery Services
As a home computer owner, one of the greatest threats to yourinformation and to your wallet, is hard disk failure. When yourdrive crashes, you will quicky realize how valuable theinformation you can no longer access is.
Computer Data Recovery Options
Losing files on your computer can be a frightening experience if the files are of importance to you personally or professionally. Computer data recovery techniques include the most simple of operations, like simply retrieving an accidentally deleted file, to very complex file retrieval procedures that only professionals should attempt to do.
Data Recovery
Every person who uses a personal computer will eventually face the challenge of data recovery. Computer hardware and software can be temperamental from time to time.
Backing Up Personal Computers
Backup on business computers is typically not the user's concern unless it's a small business. A business should have a policy in place for managing backups especially due to Sarbanes - Oxyley.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Risk Analysis and Control
In the risk evaluation phase, there are a number of key areas that must be covered. One of the most important is to understand probable threats.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Business Impact Analysis
Business impact analysis is a critical part of the business continuity planning process. This step quantifies data and gets into the real world issue of potential losses that can negatively impact your business.
The Best Data Recovery Choice For You
The best defense against a loss of data is a really solid and faithful backup routine of important files to reliable media. It's also a good idea for the media to be removable and portable if possible so that even if something happens to your whole computer for any reason, the data is protected by being in a totally different physical area.
Is Your Backup Good Enough?
As someone who has seen quite a few hard drive crashes over the years, I believe that performing a full backup of your computer's hard drive should be an important part of your weekly (if not daily) routine. There's nothing more frustrating & costly than trying to restore a computer with only a handful of Floppy disk drives, a couple of scratched CD-ROMs or poorly stored backup tapes.
The Seven Golden Rules Of Data Backups
Backups of company data are carried out for two main reasons. The first is to cater for those times when a document is inadvertently deleted or damaged and you wish to recover the original document; the second is as part of a disaster recovery plan in case something catastrophic happens to your computers (e.
I Lost It! Simple Guide To Recovering Corrupted Images And Files
WinUndeletehttp://www.deprice.
Online Data Backups for Newbies
How long have you been doing business online? Whether you are new or an old timer you need to understand the one important truth of the e-world. That being that the largest threat to business survival is data loss.
Data Recovery - What Not to Do!
Data recovery is a tricky thing, and if you've somehowdeleted or had your important files corrupted or lost due tohuman error, business espionage, faulty hardware or softwareor any other reason; the good news is that your lost datais probably recoverable. This article will show you a fewthings NOT to do when an event such as this occurs.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - A Business Not a Technology Issue
Hackers, hurricanes, fires, flooding, power outages, denial of service attacks, application failures, employee error, sabotage and now terrorism are helping companies to focus on the necessity of a business continuity plan.Through the late 1990s as companies prepared for Y2K, many IT executives, risk managers, CFOs and corporate managers realized that recovering computing systems, networks and data was not enough.
The Importance Of Email Backup
Viruses, software failures, power failures, human errors, hard drive failures are only a few examples of what could destroy the data on a hard drive, including all documents, pictures, emails and other files!Most home computer users don't need an expensive backup solution; as they only need to burn the folders with important documents and pictures to a CD-RW from time to time; this ensuring that in case of a disaster they can easily get them back. Togeder with documents and pictures, it's a critical operation to save the emails, attachments, address book and other important data from within the email client; otherwise in case of a computer problem the user will find himself in the impossibility to get them back, and this can be a really unwanted situation especially for webmasters or people who rely on their emails.
Bill Gates Made Data Recovery Easy
Bill gates provided a ready made option in Microsoft windows, which is very useful for data recovery.Several time we make mistakes unknowingly and we lost our data, then we need to recover the data.
3 Simple Steps To Organize Your Critical Online Home Based Business Directory
If You are running an Online Work at home Business it is very critical that you create a well organized directory structure. The Obvious advantage of an organized Directory structure is it makes it easy to find what you need.
Hard Drive Crash? The Essential Data Recovery Report
Your worst nightmare just became a horrifying reality. You keep hearing that little voice in your head mockingly shout "you should have backed that stuff up" The voice keeps echoing throughout your head as you perform a quick inventory all of the important information that you just lost?.