Making Memories

Backing up data is a chore that has to be done, but it’s not enough on its own.
I was visiting family in Brisbane when the terrible flooding happened.

None of my family’s homes was affected by the flood but many of their friend’s houses were.
As I starting thinking about the families I know that had lost all their possessions in the flood, I realised that for many they would have also lost their memories in the form of their digital data.

How many of them like me now use digital cameras to capture their family’s special moments. I think a lot. A portion of them would then back up these memories to back up media like external hard drives. Then, happy in the knowledge they have a backup, they would leave the backup media on the desk with the computer.

The bottom line that results from thinking about this situation is simply that just backing up is not enough. Copies of backups need to be stored in a different physical location from your computer room.
Should the worst ever happen, you’ll still have your data safely backed up.
It needn’t be difficult. For example, you might just burn an extra backup DVD every so often and give it to a friend or family member.

Consider using two identical external USB drives such that the computers at both your home and business each have one. Every night each machine backs up normally to its external drive. Then, every so often just swap the external drives – take the one at home to work, and take the one at work back home.
That way, not only is your home data backed up off-site (at your business), but the business’s data is also backed up off-site (at your home).

Using online backup services in addition to your routine in-house backup might be an additional alternative for perhaps more limited amounts of data. In addition to being available after a catastrophe, these are also often convenient ways to access backed up files from any location even when there’s no problem at all.
Whatever your solution, you need to have a disaster plan that takes this extreme level of potential loss in to account.
Watching in horror at the speed in which a disaster can occur really makes this worth thinking about now.
Don’t just backup your data. Have a copy of your data off site as well.

Cliff Salter
www.pchardware.co.nz