Comments on: Is your Business Prepared for a Data Disaster?

By: Alex Mikhalev

Alex Mikhalev — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:47:44 +0000

Ed, thank you for this article, I hope more businesses will start doing proper things with their data. Here in UK IT services for businesses looks quite poor – it’s hard to find a specialist. I would add that there are people who once lost their data and people who are asking for disaster of not checking their backup. Even being an experienced IT pro I found you article refreshing – I do have a backup policy and check it often, but I also know few companies who had their data backed up a year ago.
I think a proper step for any small business owner would be to find a proper advisor and have a backup procedure tailored to their bussiness. There are plenty of services to choose from depending on the budget and requirements. External hard drive is fine until real disaster – fire, for example. So some portions of data – like finance information should be kept off site. It would be interesting to see some backup and disaster recovery examples for businesses in the future article. I can provide you with real life examples.
I found it very difficult to persuade business owners to part with some money when everythong is fine, but now I have a good article to point to so I hope it will change. Folks, remember, IT downtime is expencive.

@Neil SVN is centralized and specifically designed to developers. There are several technical design flaws there (i.e. inability to keep timestamps and permissions, you should be online in order to check in) and that limits applicability of svn for backup or synchronisation non-developers files. If you would like to use SCM system for the company check mercurial or git. Or variation of svn – svk. On the other hand it may be wiser to use google apps docs for storing word and excel files and keeping track of history rather then svn.
@Martin Lindeskog
As linux user you already have all tools available for you. Just set up “duplicity” to backup your data externally – to amazon s3 for example. Just remember to write proper ignore files so you would not backup gigabytes of family photos to s3 as this will be expensive, my family photos usually goes to external hard drive. Another interesting tool called “ifolder” is a folder automatically synchronized with online server.

@All if you in UK I may be able to advice you on your backup strategy.

By: Small Business Data Disaster Lessons « Small Business Lessons

Small Business Data Disaster Lessons « Small Business Lessons — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:11:59 +0000

[...] Of course, as the CEO of your business you can’t afford to lose your dreams because you’ve let go the chance to have at least prepared yourself from that disaster. Well guys, here’s his few meaningful tips on how to deal with it in his article, Is Your Business Prepared For Data Disaster?. [...]

By: Pinny Cohen

Pinny Cohen — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:33:25 +0000

I’ve had to use Data Recovery experts in the past, and it is incredibly expensive, and takes a long time for them to get the data out.

My advice is backup, backup, backup. But it is also important to know what to do with the backups in order to “restore” what you had before.

By: Shannon Cherry

Shannon Cherry — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:05:16 +0000

You are absolutely right when saying small business owners need to have a data disaster plan. I tend to back up my data at least weekly so in case something happens I will not lose any of my valuable work that I spent hours putting into it. Good article and great advice for other small business owners.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:12:45 +0000

There’s some good information coming through via the discussion and comments here in addition to the informative post. I learned a thing or two just reading through the comments – nice

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:57:56 +0000

I’m a little more techie, and this involves a little more upfront work, but I swear by using an SVN repository and something like TortoiseSVN.

It turns the backup idea on its head a little, because the “master” document is in the cloud, and the document on your C: drive (and an employee C drive, etc) is the “working” copy.

i.e.

1) The “master” version of everything is in “the cloud” (i.e. the repository) where it is managed and backed up.

2) You can “check out” a local working copy on your computer. When you make an update, you are prompted to check it back in to the repository in the cloud.

3) Each time you check something in, the old version is tucked away in case you need it. You can go back to any version and even have the software tell you the difference between versions of a document.

4) If you have multiple employees or computers, you can keep them all in synch with the latest versions of everything, by having them linked in to the master repository. Great if you need to distribute updates and/or have multiple people editing something.

If you google “SVN hosting” you’ll find a lot of good providers…

By: Martin Lindeskog

Martin Lindeskog — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:09:29 +0000

I don’t want to spend lots of time on doing back-ups and saving data in different places. Don’t you think you will have automatically back-up systems and extra storage space online services in the future? Why store it physically, if you could access online? An alternative could be a smart new generation of the USB memory stick that could store all your important data and your favorite programs and tools.

I am using an computer with Mandrakelinux operating system and I hope it will not crash… But I have to consult my brother who is a computer expert regarding the storage of my data in the future.

By: Paula

Paula — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:34:08 +0000

I honestly have never thought of needing a backup plan for my computer. That was until I read this article and it got me thinking. Everyone has provided a lot of good information here. It’s something I think I need to consider.

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:17:45 +0000

I’ve been an IT consultant for small/medium businesses for 10 years, and there’s now a better product on the market to address this issue than ever before. It’s from a company called Zenith, and it’s a called a Backup and Disaster Recovery device (BDR). I know the focus of this blog isn’t tech so I won’t go into the 1′s and 0′s, but the business drivers are that it’s a fully managed (meaning no interaction is required by you) solution that does both backup and disaster recovery astonishingly well and at an astonishingly low price. Lots of consulting companies resell it (full disclosure: including mine), so if you are a small business owner, have a small server-based network, and are looking for a backup and/or disaster recovery solution, I’d recommend calling different IT consultants in your area and asking for the Zenith BDR.

By: Ad Manager

Ad Manager — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:39:00 +0000

One commenter above pointed out that many of personal and business data now are stored at different online services (i.e. the cloud). Most serious online businesses have backup plans and have procedures for recovery. However, there will be some bad decisions and you should not totally rely on them to get your data back. That’s why we should all demand the cloud, like Flickr, Gmail, etc. to have data portability, ability to export your data to your own computer or other media devices.