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Data Back Up & Data Recovery, Do The Two Sit Side By
Side?
For the majority of
SME companies, their key critical data they held on
computer systems, is essential in the running and
profitability of their businesses.
In
today's climate of data protection, data loss and
data hacking, most businesses have some form of data
protection on their systems; either an anti-virus
software, anti spyware or firewall. The more astute
will have taken steps to protect their critical data
whether by making a duplicate and putting it on an
external drive or using free software available to
back up their data to their system. Larger companies
tend to invest in a tape back up system, which
necessitates the need to regularly change the tape
drives and replace the drives as they start to wear
or become full.
The
point being is that critical business data is at the
heart of a company and without your sales ledger,
payroll details, client database; most companies
would not know where to turn for help. The recent
floods caused chaos to a huge number of businesses
and lead to some of these going to the wall, as they
lost everything. Even if a suitable insurance
product had been put into place for business
continuity, the cash injection cannot replace the
data. I know of companies who had servers backing up
to duplicate servers sitting next to each other that
were both flooded. There are a number of solutions
to help businesses prevent this eventuality; it
doesn't have to be just flooding for these solutions
to work.
First, any back up is better than none and a good
start to helping you if loose or damage your data.
If you have a back up drive make sure it is away
from your main system (some people even take them
home, but be careful this can cause more harm as a
disk drive has moving parts and these can get
damaged in transit). If you have a tape back up
system, make sure that the drives are regularly
verified (to make sure that what you are backing up
is actually backing up to the various tapes being
used), a network support company should be able to
offer this service. If you have back up servers make
sure the location of the back up is away from the
original, better still another floor or building. If
these methods and solutions either seem to complex
or involve too much expense or expertise why not
back up your data off site with a data back up
company.
Data Back up companies tend to offer a simple back
up software solution which will back up all of your
critical business data via your own system, encrypt
this data and then transfer it via the internet to
either Servers or Data Centres. Once the data back
up has been completed the software will send an
e-mail to you to say the process has been
successfully completed. All of this can be easily
automated so that once you have decided what key
data you want backing up, the software will doing it
at regular intervals, whatever you decide. If you
need to retrieve your data at any point for any
reason it can downloaded from the Server/Data Centre
and re-installed to your system.
Most businesses are now considering a disaster
recovery route which involves data back up and off
site data back up is certainly one option I would
whole heartedly recommend any business to have, as
the cost of implementing this solution is extremely
small compared the cost of losing your data and
possibility of your business. But if you haven't
already addressed the issue of data back up, what
exists for the company who has suffered the loss of
data or suffered a disaster? Data recovery is a well
established arm of corporate business and is a
necessity in helping business who has suffered data
loss. Not all data is recoverable, it depends on
what has happened to the drive, but the majority of
Data Recovery companies, have a high percentage rate
of recovering data. Even some of the flood damaged
drives examined, have been able to be recovered via
a quite complex process, but this does take time and
a great deal of expertise and with any type of cure
is usually more expensive than the prevention.
Inevitably accidents will happen; dropping a laptop,
reformatting a drive, but all is not lost. But
prevention is always better cure and knowing that a
cure exists at all is better than despair. Make a
good business decision and make sure your critical
data is securely backed up, preferably off site.
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