You’re working on a large presentation, and you’re just about to save the final copy. Then suddenly, your computer completely freezes and you’re kicking yourself for not hitting save often enough. By the time you reboot, hours of work are wiped out.
This frustrating scenario is one that most of us have experienced at some point (many of us more than once) and it illustrates file loss on a small scale. What happens when an entire computer’s files are lost? Or worse yet, all the files on your network?
Offices are generating data at a dizzying pace. Every day new document files that are created and need to be safeguarded from loss. If you get careless about properly managing your data backup, it can mean major costs that can’t be recouped.
The average cost to businesses for each lost file is AU$221.
Reliable data backup and disaster recovery is one of the most important parts of a good business continuity plan. Data loss can happen at any time and it’s nearly always unexpected. The only way to prevent it is to be properly prepared with a strong backup plan and to avoid making some costly, and all too common, backup mistakes.
Avoid Devastating Data Loss with Smart Backup Practices
You’ve plugged in the external backup hard drive and clicked start, and everything is looking good. Then 13 months later your laptop is stolen and when you plug the backup drive into a new device to recover your files, you realise it stopped backing up files 6 months earlier.
The average failure rate of backing up all data in your office properly is 75%. The cause of such as high rate is everyday mistakes made during backups.
Following are the most common backup mishaps and how to avoid them.
Never Checking Your Backup
The scenario we describe above is an example of what can happen if you never check your backup. There are multiple reasons a backup can hit a snag, such as hardware malfunction, software malfunction, or an employee just accidentally turning it off.
You want to check your backups regularly to ensure they’re running properly and haven’t run into problems for any reason.
Running Out of Space
A companion mistake to “never checking your backup” is allowing your backup to run out of space, but not knowing about it because you didn’t check. If you’ve hit your storage limit on a cloud or physical backup drive, you could be left with several months worth of data that was never backed up and not know it until you need that data restored.
Never Checking Your Data Recovery Tool
Often, we assume if everything is backing up properly, our job is done, and everything will be there when we need it. But if you never test the data recovery portion of your backup and recovery tool, you could end up with a problem, such as not being able to restore the data where you want to due to incompatible operating system versions.
You want to test data recovery to ensure the recovery is working and that you understand how to do it. During an emergency right after a major data loss incident is NOT when you want to be learning how to manage the recovery tool.
While you’re testing it, it’s a good idea to put the steps down in an easy to access manual or “data recovery cheat sheet.”
Not Backing Up Off Site
If your office is hit by a cyclone, flood, or other disaster, if you’ve only backed up your business data to hard drives located on premise, you could end up losing everything and being left with no backup.
It’s fine to back up on-site, but you also need to have a backup somewhere else, such as a cloud backup. This ensures business continuity if anything happens at your physical office because you’ll be able to retrieve your data from the cloud to any internet connected device.
Not Choosing the Right Backup Folders
When you first start backing up data, you’re typically asked to choose the folders or drives to include. If you make a mistake and leave something out or create an important folder later somewhere else on your hard drive that’s outside the backup, you could end up missing vital files in your backup.
The most resilient types of backups are those that take a full image of your entire computer, operating system, programs, files, etc.so you can ensure everything is included and it will be a much faster recovery should anything happen to your computer.
Backup & Disaster Recovery Systems Designed for Your Business
Connected Platforms takes a multi-layered approach to backup and disaster recovery to ensure your business is protected no matter what. We can manage and monitor every element of your IT infrastructure to ensure resiliency in the case of a data loss incident (small or large). Put your data in good hands with Connected Platforms.
Contact us today to discuss your backup strategy or to learn which of our other IT solutions can help you and your business. Call (07) 3062 6932 or reach out online.
