Data Storage and Back-up for Dummies
In your practice, you potentially collect a lot of data. You probably have marketing information, prospect information, past and current client information, and resources that you use and/or share with clients. And don’t forget all that important bookkeeping data that your accountant wants every month.
What would happen if you arrived at work tomorrow and discovered that it was all gone from your hard drive? (insert freak out here)
Data back-up is like flossing your teeth or checking your car’s tire pressure. It’s something you should do regularly but probably don’t. Lots of people don’t. There are usually 3 reasons why people don’t back things up:
- It took a lot of time to back things up;
- It could cost a lot of money for storage space;
- It was a hassle.
Fortunately, those aren’t excuses any longer. Advancements in data storage have dramatically improved backing-up opportunities and have resolved these three issues. Now, there are all kinds of options that you can implement to back up your data.
Here are the three that I use.
External Hard drive. For a hundred bucks or so you can get a TON of space (probably more than you’ll need for the amount of information you currently have). I keep my hard drive connected to my computer and have it set on "auto sync" (the synchronizing software came with the hard drive). So, every few minutes, my external hard drive whirrrrs for a moment and everything is mirrored between my computer and my hard drive.
USB stick. I like the external hard drive for a close-at-hand solution that carries a lot of information. But sometimes I like the security of knowing that my information is easily accessible but not at my office. At the end of every day, my receptionist takes 3 minutes to copy over my computer files to a USB stick and puts it on my desk where I pick it up on the way out the door. If I need to do work offsite, this is a handy way to have everything with me.
Amazon. This is the mother of all backups. I love it and highly recommend it. It costs just a few cents a month (no, that’s not an exaggeration. I think I pay 50 cents a month). You go to www.JungleDisk.com and follow their instructions to download their program. Then sign up at Amazon S3 (JungleDisk has all the details). Then run JungleDisk on your computer. You can configure it to save regularly to Amazon’s "cloud". It’s so easy.
Now that I’ve given you these 3 storage ideas, here’s a best practice: Do all 3. Your data is your business and if it were to be lost, it could cost you. Like paying for insurance, it can seem unnecessary… UNTIL you need it! So, for the cost of an external hard drive, a USB stick, and Amazon’s back-up, it’s well worth the peace of mind and business continuation that you’ll get. Take an hour or two and get it all working together. Get a back-up system in place. Yes, you’ll lose an hour of productivity, but if disaster ever strikes your business, you’ll be able to bounce back fast.
Today’s technology solves all three previous excuses you had for not backing up data: It’s so quick (and sometimes automated) to back up your data. It costs so little now to back up in all three ways. And, it’s as easy as dragging files from one place to another.
Okay, you’ve reached the end of this post. Did you write "put a back-up plan in place" in your schedule? Scratch it out. That’s right, scratch it out. Don’t schedule it. Do it right now.
I’m watching you. Do it now.
No, don’t even think about clicking to another site. Put a back-up plan in place.
Think I’m nagging you? Trust me, you’ll thank me some day.
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Comments
How many back-ups of my data should I save? I have been saving business data for three years now, and have over 250 GB of data. Should I throw away 2007 files? How many duplicates do I need? Thanks for your advice!
Hey Beth =)
That depends on whether or not you still have data from 07 you want/need. I’ll tell you what I find to be a really great solution is online backup systems like Mozy.com. It’s completely hands-free, you set it to back up every 12 or 24 hours, or however frequently you want (choose according to how often you save new stuff; I used every 12 hours) and it does it automatically for you – you don’t even have to push a single button, it knows when it’s supposed to backup your system and it automatically does it. Not only is it hands-free but it’s all offsite so if (God forbid it ever happen) your house caught on fire or flooded, you don’t have to worry about losing your external backup system (if that’s what you’re using). It’s $5.00 month for unlimited storage and a very reliable and well-known service. If something ever happens to your computer, with the click of a couple of buttons Mozy will restore it all for you. Here’s a write-up I did on Mozy on my IM blog a while back http://imconnections.com/online-backup-for-your-computer-185 …I still use it to this day and I LOVE IT. I always feel safe and secure knowing no matter what, my data is SAFE at all times and I don’t have to do a thing.
You shouldn’t really be keeping “duplicates” per se, whenever you backup your files (if you’re doing it manually/with an external drive, etc.) you should be overwriting all of the existing data on the drive so that only files currently on your computer are on there – unless you have some old stuff you don’t want to have on your computer but you do want to have on an external drive for retrieval later if need be. So whenever you clean out old files from your computer, the old files are also cleaned out from your backup drive when you overwrite the old stored data with the most recent data. I hope that makes sense? Most people generally only need one copy unless you really have some serious stuff on there or just want to be super duper safe – in which case you might consider a backup service like Mozy (or another one) plus use an external drive of your own so that you have a copy at home on your external drive and a copy off site with a data storage center.
Hope that helps, please do let us know if you have more questions…happy to help!
Karen J.
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