By Edahn Golan

 

Your computer is going to die. I’m not joking - your computer is going to drop dead on you, and there is a big chance it will catch you by surprise. I don’t mean ‘oh, gosh golly, I can’t believe it happened’ surprised, I mean ‘hot damn, my computer died and I have just lost tons of VERY valuable information’ surprised. A word to the wise: Ouch.

 

If I may indulge, two words to the wise: this hurts.

 

You don’t need me to tell you how valuable your information is and how it could hurt you if it’s lost. You know far better then me what you have on your computer: how about your entire diamond stock documentation - what you have, how much it cost. Worse - who owes you money, how much and when it is due. Very painful.

 

I’m not here to prepare salt for rubbing into your impending wounds, but rather to offer you a couple of suggestions for precautions to take before your beloved ‘Old Compi’ takes a nosedive into oblivion.

 

Depending on the size of your operation, you might have anything from a single computer to a major network that includes several servers (file server, data server, mail server, etc.) spread around the world. Whatever it is, there is only one single piece of advice that can be offered - backup! As often as possible.

 

OK, ahead of mourning I’m worried. What can I do? If your operation has a network and server you should automate the whole process. A common solution is to have everybody in the company save their data (read: word and excel files, databases, etc. - but not the programs that run them) on the server and backup these files automatically every night. A widespread system uses tape drives and a specialized program such as Backup Exec by Veritas. It will easily walk you through the process. The program will run you $370 and upwards, depending on the exact version, but you can download it and try it out before buying.

 

But, you might ask, what if I only need to backup one computer? Or maybe I don’t have a server in my office? No problem.

 

You can start with something simple: burn all your new documents to a rewritable CD at the end of the day. It’s an easy, simple and straightforward method that requires little knowledge and costs only a few dollars. You can take advantage of advanced features that come with any CD burning software and do only an incremental backup, meaning the software tracks what changed by comparing the contents of your hard drive with what was last backed up and then adds the new and changed files.

 

If you want to try something a little different, try an online backup. Conneted.com works with private clients as well as Fortune 500 companies and gets excellent ratings by computer magazines that tested them out.

 

It backs up your computers according to the schedule you set or whenever you’re online. Data is encrypted and transmitted safely over the Internet to their secure, geographically separated, redundant Data Centers. All you need to do is download their program, let it run once (it might take all night), but from that point on it’s only a matter of minutes, even over a dial-up connection, while checking email and you have some peace of mind for when the ‘rest in peace’ scenario hits.

 

The service is free for the first month and then $15 for up to 2 gigabytes of data storage. Retrieving your data is a simple matter that only requires you to be connected to the Internet.

 

Links:

Veritas - www.veritas.com

www.connected.com

 

Keep those emails coming in. If you have a question, suggestion or a comment to make, by all means drop me a line at: edahn@idexonline.com.