What will happen today? In the last few months we have seen entire city's, states and even countries endure massive black outs, mother nature unleashing some of the worst earthquakes, flooding, hurricane's and typhoons on record and even more terrorist bombings throughout the world. Let's also not forget the numerous outbreaks of viruses and worms ranging from the 'SoBig' worm, which plagued corporate networks and home users and created significant volumes of email traffic causing email networks around the world to collapse to the MSBlast virus, which was more of a nuisance than anything else. What all these have in common and especially made it relevant to this article is that each one of these events has the potential to affect your data if they happen to you.
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"It is estimated that 40 percent of data backups done at home are unsuccessful..." |
It is estimated that 40 percent of data backups done at home are unsuccessful, either because they were not completed or the data is in a form that cannot be read or accessed. For the majority of people that already back up their information, I would assume they simply save or burn the data to a disk or CD then just put them in a cupboard somewhere. Now this is fine until either you loose or misplace the information or worse if your entire office building is destroyed, leaving a clump of melted plastic on the floor, which use to be your backed up files.
The most effective way of avoiding this ever happening and living out this nightmare is to store your data off-site or simply install a fire proof safe.
There are quiet a few storage service providers (SSPs) available that specialize in storing your data for safe keeping and depending on the size of the company and the services it provides there are usually a few contracts to choose from that are negotiable and not too expensive.
Another effective and easy way of protecting your data is to select someone to take them home each night when they leave, or store them in a safe place. Now the main problem you will face if you choose to delegate someone to take them off-site and storing them somewhere else is that if an emergency were to arise where you needed the back up files you would have to wait for that person to go and retrieve the files and bring them back. It is this exact reason why I prefer to have a fire proof safe instead. It is convenient if I suddenly needed a file, you can lock your precious data safely away and if anything were to happen to my office I would be almost certain my data was safe from fire or any other danger.
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The majority of Windows versions also come with some very useful backup features including a Backup and Recovery tool, Auto Recover function for Microsoft Word and my personal favorite the System Restore tool.
The System Restore tool is especially helpful if for some reason you need to revert back to a previous setting on your system. It is set to save restore points every so often by default but it also gives you the option of setting your own restore points that you can go back to. This become very useful for me only last week when I was installing some new software and drivers when all of a sudden my computer froze and when I restarted my system I found that I no longer had the use of any CD-Rom or CD Burners, and my system would continuously freeze.
I simply chose a restore point previous to when I had installed the software and drivers and like magic my system was back to normal and the problem was fixed.
There are also some simple precautions that hardly take any time at all to set up but can save you hours of work being lost if some minor accident were to happen such as a power cut. For those of you who use Microsoft Office, which I assume would be a large majority of people the most effective and easy setting to adjust, is the autosave setting.
By default the autosave setting is set to save your document every 10 minutes, but for the people who hate retyping what they have already typed, which again I guess would be a large percentage of users, simply set it to save what you have written every couple of minutes. Something as simple as this could save you a lot of headaches and time.
Another good idea for users of Microsoft Outlook is to backup your emails. I know like many of you I receive a lot of important emails all the time that I cannot afford to loose. Mail files have a .dbx extension. These files are normally stored four or fives layers deep in the Documents and Settings folder on your hard drive, which is not that hard to find but if you are in a rush you can simply search for the .dbx files using the search option located in your Start menu.
With the majority of these backup's in place you should be able to weather almost any disaster that may come your way, no matter how unlikely it may seem. While in a business environment the loss of data may seem to be of higher value where that data is money, it is equally important to protect your valuable data, or even just to protect a few memorable photos or a letter from an old friend. Remember most people say it will never happen to them, but who knows what will happen today...