Computer Backup From Mild to Wild
Backing up your computer files is not important!
It’s only important when something goes wrong. And something always can go wrong.
I know because it did at my shop years ago. No, I means years ago. It was so long ago IBM was the powerhouse in computers and laptops were still a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eye.
The good news is we did have two big backup drives that were more like tapes the size of small pizzas. The bad news we never quite got around to actually making those backups as often as we should because we were always too busy working and using the computer. So when the day came and the server crashed, we took out our last backup. It was done only ONE MONTH BEFORE!
That meant we had to recreate all the invoices and bills for the last month.
We had thousands of active customers and this reclamation project could have been avoided if we practiced a sound computer backup routine.
Be smart and take a little bit of this medicine and spare yourself the sickness of having to rebuild your files, database and more.
This is a quick overview of steps to take beginning with mild and heading toward wild. Do what you feel is prudent and what you can do consistently:
- 1.
Do a simple save frequently as you’re working in a document so you don’t spend
two hours on it and the power goes out and you risk losing it.
2. Burn a disk if it’s something you want to keep for a long-time.
3. Copy a bunch of stuff to a jump drive.
4. Copy a whole bunch of your data to an external hard drive [today they can hold so much and they’re so cheap you can copy your whole computer to it!]
5. Set it up so when you’re sleeping the computer automatically backs it up to your external hard drive.
6. Have two external hard drives and do a manual backup once a week [put a recurring note in Outlook so you remember to do it] and take one copy off site so if heaven forbid disaster strikes, you still have a copy that’s no more than a week old.
7. Make sure if you’re networked or not that the backup is backing up the server with the shared files.
This is so important that I spend a portion of my first onsite visit with new clients covering items just like this.
My advice is: “A parachute is good. A backup parachute is smart. It’s even better if they’re periodically inspected.”
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