If you don’t have a data backup plan, it’s like driving a car without insurance. The plan will take time and effort to put together, but when you need it, you’ll be thankful you have it. It’ll be priceless.
Don’t be one of those people…”shoulda, woulda, coulda”.
Hard drives are mechanical devices. They will eventually fail. Recovering data from a failed hard drive can cost thousands of dollars not to mention the downtime and disruption to business.
So what’s the best way to backup data? There are very complex data backup solutions at the enterprise level, but for a small business and home based office, an external hard drive or one of the many affordable online backup services is recommended. If you can do both, it’s even better.
If security is an issue; data can be stored in an encrypted format which is virtually impossible to crack. Most online backup services encrypt data by default so you can have peace of mind that your data is sitting out in cyber space in unreadable format except for your eyes.
Once you set up a backup plan it’s imperative that you check on it from time to time to make sure the backup is working properly. And make sure to add new directories and files in the backup schedule. Also, doing a test restoration is good practice. There is nothing more frustrating than knowing that you have a good backup but you don’t know how to retrieve the file you need.
Please be proactive. When you hear horror stories about crashed hard drives and lost data, you can thank yourself you have a plan in place.
