Office El Nino - Avoiding Data Loss

There are success stories, but there are also many horror stories.

THE TAPEWORM. For instance, one story starts with a man who backed up his applications religiously every night. Every three days he used the tape from three days prior and wrote over it. Everything was safe, or so he thought, as the years drifted by. He prospered, and his sleep was sweet.

But one day it happened - one day the man noticed some of his data looked corrupted. He tried using the repair feature his software program provided to no avail. His backup from the night before was corrupted. “No problem,” he thought confidently, "I'll just fire up the tape from two days ago." Annoyed by the inconvenience, but grateful that he was the resourceful type who had the foresight to do backups, he breathed a sigh of relief and restored from backup.

This time his heart skipped more than a couple of beats. The repair feature didn't fix the problem, and restoring from the backup didn't fix it either. But that was fine because he still had another tape from three days prior to noticing the problem. He knew it would be very costly to reconstruct all the data his business generated in three days, but what other choice did he have? So he popped in the third backup tape. If his heart had been in the Boston Marathon, he'd have won - corrupted data galore.

In his hands the man held three tapes of corrupted data and years and years of lost history. Scattered among nooks and crannies in files throughout his office was information that he would spend the next several years piecing together.

Although this is a somewhat terrifying story, the man and his business survived, but not without blood, sweat, tears and the patience of Job.

What happened? Unbeknownst to our friend, he overwrote bad data on top of good. And corrupted data can take several days or even a few weeks before it rears its monstrous head.

So you are now wondering how many tapes you should have before rewriting the old tapes. That answer will come later. First, let’s look at a happy ending.

STOLEN COMPUTER, SAFE DATA. Another insightful, sagacious business owner who religiously performed backups every night (to new tapes) prepared to close up and go home after a busy day. He did his nightly backup, put it on the shelf next to his computer, locked up his shop, went home and slept merrily through the night.

But he did not awaken merrily. He got a call from the police. His shop had been robbed clean. No computers, no printers, no fax machine, no trimmers, no mowers, no nothing. He raced to his office, heart pounding. He had one thing on his mind - the tape. Had they stolen the tape? Into his office he dashed, only looking, only caring, about that one thing. (Remember, this is the happy ending). There it was right beside what would have been the computer had it been there.

This business owner knew the value of information. He knew that he could recover from his financial loss if he had his data. He knew what all savvy business owners know, that information is more valuable than things. But what if his crooks were as smart as he and they had taken the tape instead of the computers? Even this happy ending has a lesson to be learned.

SAVE YOUR DATA AT ALL COSTS. There are many horror stories and many lessons to be learned in regard to data backups. However, business owners don't have to learn them through bad experiences. A good definition of wisdom is avoiding bad experiences by applying good advice. Below are some basic facts about backups and some sound advice to help you gain wisdom, avoid bad experiences and continue to grow and prosper painlessly.

1. Three events can bring your computer to a grinding halt: hardware problems, software problems and user error. Whatever the cause, don't be deceived. All hard drives crash sooner or later. A backup is your only insurance against losing your valuable information.



2. A general rule of thumb for how often you should make backups is to make them at the point it becomes more costly to lose your data than to take the time to make a backup.



3. There are various mediums available for backups. Almost all of them can be used with the Windows Backup utility (which comes with Windows).



4. Backup any files that you won't be able to retrieve if something happens to your computer, such as document and data files.



5. You should back up programs and data to removable media, like a Zip disk or a tape drive.



6. Do not try to save time through incremental or "modified" backups. Incremental backups only back up data detected as having been changed since the last backup. If one link in your chain of backups breaks, you lose all.



7. When restoring from backup, make sure to select the option that "Overwrites All Files.” It is normally set to only overwrite older files. If this is not changed you will receive errors when trying to run certain programs after restoring.



8. When using tape drives, you can schedule your backup at night so it does not interfere with business or keep you waiting when you're ready to go home.



9. You should have at least two weeks of tapes before you overwrite them. (This is the solution to the problem in Story #1: The Tapeworm.)



10. Tapes containing end of month data should not be overwritten - ever.



11. Store your backups somewhere other than in your office. (This is the solution to the potential problem in Story #2: Stolen Computer, Safe Data).



12. Do not store your backup in a fireproof safe. Tapes melt in heat.



13. You should check the integrity of your backups regularly. If you have to, periodically restore your backup on a friend's computer.

In the event of a computer hardware crash, having good backups could mean the difference between the life and death of your company. There are various methods for backing up, and depending on whom you talk to, one will swear by this method and another by that. The bottom line is, you should choose the method that enables you to make backups regularly, habitually, consistently, routinely and often.