Today, technology is the cornerstone of any successful business. The ability to store data about your clients, your staff and the internal workings of your company with relative ease is something that most of us take for granted in a digital age. Having your own server at your offices is more than common, with all of your critical files and figures are your fingertips giving you one less thing to worry about. But what happens if something goes wrong, and you lose that data?
It’s all too easy. The amount of tiny interconnected pieces of machinery that come together to store your terabytes of information is mind-boggling, and something as simple as a dropped computer tower could cause serious issues for your business. Hard drives can be plagued by an array of software and hardware issues from head crashes, where your read and write heads malfunction and render your sensitive data an unreadable mess, to water damage from a natural disaster like a flood or leak. You could be out of pocket hundreds, even thousands of pounds from pricey data recovery services that try and recover as many of your files as they can, but no company can offer you a guarantee that everything can be salvaged. So what can you do to guard against data recovery issues before they even happen? The best and most simple answer is to create and maintain a comprehensive back-up of your data. A data backup is simply a copy of the files from your computer or device, and this can be done in a number of different ways. Backup devices and technologies can vary widely but the two most straight-forward methods are to create a local or network backup, or to store it offsite in the cloud.
You could create a backup of your businesses important data by storing copies of your files on hard drives, tape drives or any kind of storage device connected to your network. It’s a good idea to create several of these so that if there are issues with one version, you have another to rely on. It’s always great to have a local ‘hard copy’ of your sensitive files, and if you really want to cut down on risk you can even keep one copy of this backup offsite somewhere in case of physical disasters like fire or flooding at your office. Another way you can backup your data is by utilising the cloud, which you probably already use to an extent for running some of your systems and software over the internet. Backing up to the cloud means you have another copy of your data secured offsite that can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. This also covers you in the case of hard drive issues with one of your local backups and has the added bonus of travelling with you wherever you go remotely.
Most backup systems work by backing up all of your data, and then monitoring and updating that copy when things change with your information or new data pops up. How much data you want to be stored is entirely up to you and the specific needs of your business but securing the basic information that helps your company run is urged. And if it’s simply too late for you and your business, we have recovered data from hundreds of servers all over the world.
