Backup is a topic we have covered before, but it’s so important that we wanted to explore it again.
Backups are like an insurance policy for your business. It’s hard to see an immediate benefit to having one, and to most people, it can seem like ‘just another business expense’. However, think for a moment about what position your company would be in if you lost critical company data.
Client records, quotes, accounting information, contracts, and other company documents are commonly held in internal networks, either on local computers or a central server. For one, this makes them vulnerable to less common events like fire, theft, and water damage. However, these are not the most common ways in which data is lost. The most common form of data loss actually comes from hardware failure.
A hard drive is a component inside your computer/server that stores all of your digital information and allows your computer to run Windows/Mac. The disk itself consists of a rapidly rotating disk (over 100 revolutions per second!) coated in magnetic material which is read by a movable arm (see picture below). What many people don’t realise is that 100% of hard disks will fail eventually! This means that without a backup, you are risking the chance of permanent data loss.
Luckily, it is a fairly simple process for us to configure a robust backup solution, with several layers of redundancy and protect your data. The technology we use not only allows us to back up your data, but also to retrieve files from a previous date if they are accidentally overwritten. The other benefit is that our backup system also provides you with an offsite copy which protects against those unexpected events like fire, theft, or water damage.
Just four months ago our internal backups system saved Matt from losing critical company documents stored on his local PC after his hard disk failed one morning!
www.backblaze.com do some pretty in-depth analysis of hard drive failure statistics, and while failure rates depend on the brand, age, and size, they have come up with an overall figure of just under 6% average failure rate per year. As you can imagine, a company with 5-50 computers is taking a serious risk each year in not having a robust backup solution.
If you think your company might not be properly protected, please flick Matt an email at matt@smartlogic.co.nz so he can discuss an appropriate solution to fit your needs.
Any questions? Please contact us.