Three Easy Ways to Back-up Your Business Data 

As an IT consultant, who is very passionate about helping small businesses become more efficient through their technology, I’m always emphasising the importance of data.  The simple fact is that without your data, or your customer data, you have no business.  Although vital to the running of your business, the subject of data is both boring and complicated.

In reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated at all, although I doubt anybody can make it any more exciting!

Many business owners are confident that as long as their computers are working properly, then their data is safe.  It will always be there, waiting to be accessed and used.

The problem is that while using your computers your files are constantly being opened, written and re-written to and then closed.

All of this often causes files to corrupt, not to mention the accidental deletions or amendments that are a constant hazard.  More importantly the storage media that they are written too in not reliable in the long-term.  For example hard drive develop disk errors, and will ultimately fail.

With all of this in mind, here are three simple suggestions that will help you ensure your precious data is backed up, while keeping the processes required to do this as simple as possible.

1 – USB Memory Stick (flash drive)

This is by far the simplest and most basic method of backing up data.  USB memory sticks are available from many outlets, including supermarkets, and can be purchased for less than £15 for 32Gb of storage space.

In operation, all you need to do is plug the memory stick into a USB port on your computer, open your file browser (such as Windows Explorer) navigate to your working folders (like 'My Documents' or your 'Desktop') and copy the most important data onto the stick.  The memory stick will display as a new drive letter on your computer, probably the letter E or onwards e.g. (E:).

Top tip: Ebuyer is a good place to look for USB Flash Drives online.

• www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/USB-Flash-Drives

32Gb USB Flash Drive

2 – An External Hard Drive (HDD - Hard Disk Drive)

Using this method (an external hard disk) is almost as simple, but slightly more expensive.  Also often connected by cable into the USB port, but the disk size ranges from 50Gb up to 3Tb.  The pricing is usually from about £40 to over £200 respectively.

In operation you would use it in the same way as the USB stick, or use the software that often comes bundled with the external HDD when you buy it.  However, the software is often complicated and usually unnecessary.  If you know where your files are on your computer, and where you want to put them on the external storage drive, then 'drag and drop' (...or 'copy and paste') are often as complicated as it need to get.

Top Tip: Ebuyer is a good place to look for External Hard Drives online.

• www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/Hard-Drive---External

3Tb High performance USB 3.0 storage solution

3 – The 'Cloud' - Dropbox/Google Drive/MS OneDrive/etc.

The simplest way to take advantage of cloud storage is to use your online quota to backup your data.  Usually, when signing up for one of the more popular cloud storage providers (such as Dropbox, Google Drive or MS OneDrive) you’ll have free storage space already allocated to you.  This may be ample for your needs.  However, for a monthly fee you can have upwards of 15Gb, per person, available to use.  The main thing about back-up, if it's not to complicated for you, is to focus on the critical files (documents) and make sure you are backing up those.  They may well come within your free quota.

These 'Cloud' services will have locally installed app that synchronises your important files up to the cloud.  In operation, you will just open the locally installed app and drag the data you want to backup into the app location.

Dropbox/Google Drive/MS OneDrive

IMPORTANT NOTE

Perhaps I should have opened with this comment?
Whichever method you choose, do not be misguided in thinking that transferring your data onto the new storage solution is the answer to protecting your precious data.  It's important that any back-ups you make are a copy of your data, and the back-up means it is stored in a least 2 places.  I have seen far too many people use a pen drive as their only storage medium, only to be 'heartbroken' or worse when they discover all their data has been lost!  Don't learn this lesson the hard way!

SUMMARY

I hope that this short article has opened your eyes to how simple the first steps to keeping your precious data safe can be.

Although the suggested methods are both simple and cheap, in the long-term, they are only really suitable for consumer use.

If you take your business, your customers and the data seriously, then it really pays to have a more robust, professional data backup solution, which is provided by a professional technology provider.  With this you will get guarantees about your data's security and Service Level Agreements protecting you against data loss.

If you’d like to talk further about your data storage and security, or any other ways your technology could help your business become more efficient, please get in touch with AWP Computer Services to discuss your options.

CALL AWP Computer Services on 01772 698078

World Backup Day

Don't be an April Fool. Backup your files and check your restores on March 31^st.

World Backup Day - Don't be an April Fool!

World Backup Day Spotlights a Frequently Neglected Task

You probably weren't aware of it, but today (Monday 31^st March) is World Backup Day. Yes, a day for remembering to back up all that important data, which falls on the eve of April Fools' Day.  The motto is, "Don't be an April Fool. Backup your files and check your restores on March 31st."

The concept of World Backup Day was created by a college student in 2011, and was initially geared towards the home consumer market ("friends don't let friends go without a backup"), but it now seems that businesses also can use a reminder about the importance of backing up critical data.  Even if businesses are performing backups, many aren't doing it right.

Kroll OnTrack Data Recovery Survey

This week, Kroll OnTrack, a supplier of data recovery products, released the results of a survey of 642 customers who had lost data.  Sixty-five percent reported having a backup system in place at the time of the data loss (up from 60% in a similar poll last year), and 55% said they backed up their data on a daily basis. But 65% also reported that their backup product wasn't current or operating at the time of they lost data.

The Kroll OnTrack survey shows simply having a backup solution in place is not enough to prevent data loss.

http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/company/press-room/press-releases/2014-more-people-backup-their-data/

Kroll OnTrack surmised several reasons the backup systems didn't prevent data loss, including failure to leave a computer on during a scheduled backup, the external drive used for backup was connected only intermittently, and the backup ran out of destination space.

Of the 35% who didn't have a backup in place, 49% cited the time to research and administer a backup product as the top barrier that kept them from implementing the technology.

The Problem with Backup

The problem with backup is that there are a small number of companies that have figured out that backup is a process in the realm of data protection.  Few have considered the whole picture of it’s importance, manage it well and don't have many problems.

Unfortunately, there's a much bigger community of companies where backup is considered as a necessary evil, which is dumped on the most junior people in the business, who mindlessly follow the procedures that have been there since 10 years ago the most junior person in the company put them together.  Therefore, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Not enough testing of backup processes also leads to trouble.  Companies don't find out until something goes wrong that they didn't back up the right data, or that they failed to upgrade the backup system when they upgraded a critical application.  Changes to computer systems can often mean that the data is in a different location and the backup procedures are not changed accordingly to take this into consideration.  Often it will transpire that the backup process is effectively backing up nothing of any value.

Also, there are many small businesses who think  that if they are using RAID this means they don't have to make backups anymore, or who rotate between three tapes for backup and discover that an important file was deleted five days ago, which is longer than they're retaining data.

Backups can be a hazardous but thankless job.  Nobody ever got promoted for doing backups well, but there are a number that have probably got their marching orders for doing them badly!

With backup software and the Cloud now so cheap, not having some form of backup is unacceptable in business.  The expense of a single data loss will far outweigh the cost of backup, and getting a service after you've lost the data is futile, to say the least.

For more information about how to protect you valuable data, please contact AWP Computer Services for a FREE consultation.

World Backup Day is March 31^st. Don't be a fool. Check your backups. Check your restores. Check us!