12 Things you must backup

January 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

There will come a time in your computer life where you either have a computer crash, a large scale network disaster or simply have to reinstall an operating system. In any of those dreaded events, you will thank your lucky stars if you have these 12 things preserved, backed up and reinstalled before you begin the rebuilding process:

1) Passwords – If you keep your passwords on your computer, make sure you have this file backed up, printed out, whatever you need to ensure that your entire online life doesn’t come to a grinding halt.

2) Financial records – If you have spreadsheets, invoices, QuickBooks or other, you need to have access to that financial data.

3) Documents – Personal and professional, goes without saying that if you don’t have these in a safe place, life could get really difficult.

4) Calendar – Wow, can you imagine if you lost your contacts, calendar or task list? That would be enough to give anyone a nervous tick.

5) Have a website? Make sure you have those files preserved in a safe place. Any XML, XSLT files, archived pages and pages in draft that you may have on your computer are on your computer for a reason.

6) Network settings – Keep a copy of all your network connection settings and passwords both locally and as provided by your ISP.

7) Config files – If you’ve created your own configurations for you DNS or web server, it might make you cry if you have to make those available to you again.

8) Photos, videos and audio files – The pain of losing these goes without saying. You can’t replace memories — or in the case of business, client testimonials. Don’t torture yourself with the agony of not having these in multiple back-up locations.

9) Email – If you archive your emails, make sure you know how to save and restore these from your email program. You never know when you might need these for a lawsuit.

10) Web bookmarks – With the advent of Stumble Upon and Reddit and Pinterest, you may be bookmarking in different ways, but I’ll bet that you still have a long list of bookmarks on your browser or even an excel spreadsheet that you sure would like to keep.

11) Purchased software and downloads – If you’ve paid for programs, you certainly don’t want to lose these. No one’s made of money.

12) Music and media files – Ripping those into digital files is time-consuming and I’ll bet you don’t want to do it twice. You may not even have those CD’s anymore. Save yourself a headache and backup all your media.

A good online data back-up can lead to a happy new operating system, a faster reinstall and a content computer user. May you go forth and compute with peace.

Filed Under: Data Backup Tagged With: , , , ,

4 steps to take BEFORE you backup your data

December 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It’s one of an IT department’s and computer users worst nightmares: having to reinstall an operating system. You KNOW that it won’t be the same. You’ll lose personalized settings. You’ll spend hours updating drivers. You’ll overwrite files. It will be messy. You will not be a nice person. If you’re doing it for someone else, they will be unappreciative of the “upgrade” because nothing will run the same again.

The thing is, you never really know when you might have to reinstall an OS, so it’s always wise to prepare for that fateful day in advance. Take some screen shots of start up menus, control panel, firewall, etc. And download your installers in advance, that will allow you to reinstall cleanly to the new OS.

Now the task of backing everything up. If you’re a small business, there are four logical steps you need to take before you begin your data backup project:

1) Identify and record all data and its locations – consider the obvious (desktops, laptops, servers, etc) but don’t overlook smart-phones, tablets, websites and social network properties.

2) Determine your data backup solution: how much data needs to be backed up, how often you need to back it up, is there any data that falls under data retention laws, what is your budget and how will you ensure the backups are encrypted?

3) Where will you backup your data? An online backup solution provides additional security against any site-wide disaster. Online data backup solutions are often automated as well so you don’t have to have additional staff dedicated to your back-up plan.

4) Determine how you will monitor the accuracy and reliability of the backups (online data back up or on-site), and when and how you will assess what data needs to be backed up (additions, changes) on a regular basis.

Check back to see our list and tips of a dozen to-do’s when backing up your files. Just a few essential files that you need to remember to backup or your online life could get pretty uncomfortable: your website files, your passwords and your calendar…

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Extreme weather impacts 8 of 10 businesses

December 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Being in the business of disaster recovery, we take note anytime a survey is released of business preparedness. This particular report presented interesting results.

The survey included businesses all located in the South West and conducted by Climate SouthWest. They discovered that 8 out of 10 businesses confirmed that they had been affected by extreme wet, cold, hot, dry or stormy conditions. One respondent even said, “Heavy rain and strong winds greatly reduce my IT effectiveness. This can be, albeit temporarily, catastrophic.”

Survey respondents cited more impacts from snow, frost and ice than any other weather types, complaining of restricted access to their business as the most common effect, but also noting damage to property and traffic related incidences. Certainly no surprise to our office as the last two winters have been bone-chilling in this part of the country, and we had more than our fair share of widespread disruption of all kinds due to a healthy dumping of snow and ice.

But what we found particularly disturbing is that despite more than one-third of respondents stating that they had experienced extreme weather related issues in the past – including losing customers, incurring repair costs and a plethora of health and safety issues — they have done nothing to prevent the business interruptions in the future.

Thankfully the news wasn’t all grim. Some businesses are reviewing their health and safety procedures, creating or improving their Business Continuity Plans and seeking further advice in order to prepare themselves for future extreme weather. Survey participants said information on weather and climate, financial grants and general advice would help them prepare for impending extreme weather.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has a nice checklist of things you can do to prepare for winter’s onslaught of ice and snow, visit here. For more survey results, visit here.

How are you preparing your company for the return of winter?

Filed Under: Disaster Studies Tagged With: , , , , ,