How Your Office Can Survive a Disaster

In the past I’ve discussed the importance of securing your data and keeping sensitive data off of the Internet.  Those are two aspects to keeping your customer and your data secure.  A third way to keep that data secure is to ensure it is backed up regularly.  Here at Pursue, we have a nice simple backup system in use that you can easily implement in your office.  To get ready you’ll need the following:

• First, you will need two external USB hard drives.  You can buy them at pretty much any computer retailer or at an online store like Newegg.com.  Keep one of these hard drives connected to your computer at all times.
• Second, you will need some backup software.  The software takes the pain out of copying files and folders to the external hard drive.  It allows you to schedule backups at regular intervals and easily restore when your computer fails.  We have a Windows Server so the backup software is built in.  If you have Windows Vista or a Mac, the backup software is also built in.  If you only operate with Windows XP, then you’ll need to purchase some software like Second Copy from Centered Systems.  The other option would be just to manually copy and paste files every day, but that would get mundane.  Plus, you’ll have to remember.
• Third, you’ll need to rent a safe-deposit box at a local bank.  This is where you will store the off-site version of your backup.  It’s inexpensive, very secure, and fireproof.

Once you have the above items in place, just schedule your backup to save to the external hard drive once daily - preferably after the workday is over.  Then once a week, take the external hard drive that is currently connected to your computer and put it in the safe deposit box at the bank.  Then take the other hard drive and connect it to the computer.  Then you always have one hard drive at the bank and one connected to your computer.

Using this method will ensure that if your computer crashes, the most you will loose is one day worth of work.  It also ensures that if there is a disaster, like fire or flood, that destroys your computer and the backup drive connected to it - you will only loose one week of work by being able to restore from the backup drive at the bank.

You may decide to backup more or less often depending on the amount of data you change in a given period.  If you have more than one computer in your office and you aren’t connected to a server, you may want to consider using one of the computers as a “file server”.  Then all of the computers would back up on a regular basis to the file server and you would do the above procedures to the file server computer.

Another option is to just back up a few important files regularly to a USB flash drive.  You can use the same method above, but you’d just back up to the flash drives instead of a hard drive.  You’d be limited to the smaller space of the flash drive, but it may just be enough for what you need.

In the event that you need the backup, just follow the restore instructions on your backup software.  If you are restoring an entire computer it will take a while.  But most software will give you access to the individual files you need immediately.  It could almost be like you didn’t miss a beat.

The important things to take away are:

• Backup everything regularly
• Store the backups both on and off-site
• Your off site backup needs to be fireproof and secure

No matter how you do the above, start now and never stop.  Consider it a very inexpensive insurance policy.  You may just thank me…more than once.

Dan
Sometimes I need access to a backup of my brain

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