What would happen to your business, if you lost all your data overnight? Your financial files, you customer orders, your sales, your contacts, everything... gone! Companies are so dependent on computer systems today that most companies do not survive such a disaster. And what about all those digital photos of the kids on your home computer? The most important things evacuees took with them during the 2003 fire in Kelowna and 2009 fire in West Kelowna were their family photos. Theft, fire, flood or even hardware failure could wipe out years worth of information with little or no chance of recovering any of it. Unless... you have a plan.
However, experience has shown that most people have no plan, no protection at all against a sudden lost of data. But, a simple Disaster Recovery plan can safeguard all your data, so you don't have to worry.
The key to a good Disaster Recovery plan is to protect against all types of loses under any kind of circumstance. For example, you may be using an external USB drive to backup all your important files in case of a hardware failure. That's a good start. But, if the hard drive were to fail, how much time and effort would it take to return everything back to normal? Re-installing the operating system and all the software and recovering your data can take days. Even a recoverable lose can be costly. But, what if your business or house is destroyed by fire? Both your computer and USB drive will be destroyed along with everything else.
To be successful, your Disaster Recovery plan must achieve two goals:
- Backup All Data - Data should be easily recoverable, whether it's an accidentally deleted file or the lost of an entire hard drive.
- Offsite Storage - Backup copies should be kept at another physical location to protect against natural disasters or theft.
The best small business (and home) backup solution is Windows Home Server (WHS) from Microsoft. Some of the benefits are:
- Backups all your computers (up to 10 - PC and Mac) automatically overnight (or whenever you schedule it)
- Wakes up sleeping computers to perform backups (conserving energy)
- Does not duplicate identical files (across computers) to minimize storage requirements
- Storage can be expanded at any time
- Can duplicate important files across multiple hard drives to protect against hardware failure
- Server can be backed up to an external drive for offsite storage or to an online backup facility
- Deleted files can easily be retrieve in a few seconds
- An entire computer can be recovered from a drive failure by simply replacing the drive, inserting the recovery CD and initiating the recovery process
It's a simple and relatively inexpensive solution. You can do it yourself or we can help you set it all up in no time.