| All computers and their components are subject to | | | | when you need them. |
| failure. In fact sooner or later every business will be | | | | It is recommended that you sit down with your |
| confronted with some type of computer failure. The | | | | systems administrator to create a backup plan for |
| largest threat to businesses during a failure will be | | | | your business immediately if you have not done so |
| some type of data loss or data corruption. While the | | | | already. Also recommended, is that you review your |
| causes of data loss and data corruption vary, not all | | | | backup plan yearly as well. When discussing your |
| are easily fixed. | | | | backup plan there are certain options to consider. |
| When a data loss or data corruption occurs, many | | | | Such as how often to perform the backups and |
| times the only option is to restore the data from a | | | | what type of backup media is best suited for your |
| previously created backup of the affected data. | | | | business. Depending on your type of business and |
| Many businesses today over look the importance of | | | | how much your data changes from day to day you |
| data backups until they suffer the unexpected loss | | | | may want to perform backups weekly, daily, or |
| or corruption of valuable data. Once this occurs it | | | | several times per day. For most small to mid-sized |
| would be too late, unless the business is lucky | | | | businesses I would recommend a full backup once |
| enough to restore the data by physically recreating all | | | | per week with incremental backups at the end of |
| the affected files from scratch. This of course is only | | | | each work day. |
| possible if they have a hard copy or another source | | | | You will also want to consider whether or not to |
| from which to recreate the data. It will also cost the | | | | keep some of your backups off site in the case your |
| business a valuable amount of man hours in | | | | business is affected by some type of natural or man |
| recreating the data as well. That is if they are lucky | | | | made disaster. In addition you may also want |
| enough to be able to even recreate the data in the | | | | software to monitor your backup process in order to |
| first place. | | | | ensure that your backups are not corrupted as well. |
| If your business has made backups of all data stored | | | | This is a common experience with some types of |
| on the hard drives, restoring that data will go much | | | | backup media as well. |
| more quickly and require a lot less effort. It will also | | | | Finally you may also want to perform a system |
| require a lot less man hours and tears shed over the | | | | restore on an occasional basis so that you can check |
| loss that has occurred. | | | | the effectiveness of the restoration process that |
| Today there are many options available to businesses | | | | you have set in place and to practice it so it goes as |
| for storing and backing up their data. Some of the | | | | smoothly as possible. |
| options available are tape drives and tape libraries, | | | | Following these steps may be essential to your |
| CD-R's and CD-RW's to DVD technologies. There is | | | | business continuity should your systems fail and you |
| also the option to use NAS (Network Area Storage) | | | | suffer a loss or corruption of data. Setting up a |
| and SAN (Storage Area Networks) and even remote | | | | backup plan as well as a restoration plan will also go a |
| backups over the internet. Even Windows XP/Server | | | | long way in ensuring your business operations if you |
| 2003 offers a restore point in case your system | | | | run into a system failure. This would help establish a |
| becomes corrupted. Of course just having these | | | | "who is to do what" list if your systems should fail. |
| tools available to you is not enough. They need to be | | | | Failing to backup your business data, especially |
| used properly and on a continuous basis to be | | | | mission critical data is nothing short of a recipe for |
| effective. | | | | disaster. Nothing is as important to your business as |
| Sooner or later all systems will face some type of | | | | the data that sits on the hard drives of your |
| failure that will require a restore from backup. The | | | | systems. |
| point is to perform those backups so they are there | | | | |