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The Best Way to Do Data Backups
Filed Under: Backup
If you’re not backing up your important data, you’re gambling with your information. Computers crash every day, often when it’s least expected. Don’t take a chance on losing crucial things like customer databases and financial information. In a worst-case scenario, a company can even be forced out of business by a serious data loss. Backup your data regularly and you’ll be glad that you took the time if your system ever goes down.
Backup Your Most Crucial Data
Any information that’s vital to your company’s operation should be backed up. Think about what data your company could not do business without. Things like employee payroll, customer databases, tax information and other financial records are crucial to every business. Programs that you’ve installed can be reinstalled, as long as you have the disk and you still have your product key (which is often inside the case). But information that’s generated liked documents and databases need to be backed up.
If you lose your customer databases, you lose the kind of crucial customer service and marketing information that’s gold to companies. Contact information, past purchases, a record of contact from the customer and a record of the company contacting the customer, payment information, pending orders and more are all valuable and the lifeblood of any company. And while backing up databases takes time and a little patience, especially if the databases are large, it’s well worth it to keep a company operating normally.
Employee payroll records that include things like sick days, vacation days, withholdings, taxes and hours worked are crucial, too. You can’t pay employees or give the IRS its due without these records.
Full Backups
Full backups take the longest and take the most storage space, but they’re the easiest to use when you need to restore information. If you don’t do frequent full backups, at least do them at regular intervals. Full backups copy all of your data instead of just the data that has changed since the last backup.
But if you’re not doing a full backup often, along with your crucial customer and employee payroll databases, you’ll want to back up your Windows registry. This is the brain of your computer. If this gets corrupted and you don’t have a backup, your computer can quickly become useless. You can backup the registry by going to the registry (click the Start button, select Run and type in regedit), choosing File, and then Export. This will copy the registry to another place so you’ll have a backup.
Keep a Backup Copy Offsite
If you use tapes, DVD-ROMs or CD-ROMs for backups, you should store them somewhere away from the original system. While they’re fine if a system crashes, what if a fire or flood damages everything there, or theft is the issue? Having copies elsewhere ensures that your data won’t be lost.
You can use tapes, disks, external hard drives or online backups. Online backups ensure you’ve automatically got a copy offsite. The other options mean that you have to transport the device or medium to another site for the best security.
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