Backup-Plan

Having a Backup-Plan for your data is essential in the event of a computer failure, accidental erasure, or even a fire or other disaster that might destroy this valuable information. If your computer is used for business, your risk of loss is even greater than for your home.

With the advent of digital photography, loss of your valuable photographs can be devastating! Many of my recent photos are on my computer only! We take pictures with a digital camera, put them on our computer, and then e-mail to our friends. If I don’t back these up to an external storage device, then a computer failure could make me lose all my photos.

Simple Backup Plan

Use an external drive or USB Flash Drive (below), and make sure to copy the folder My Documents . While this not a complete backup plan, it is far better than nothing!

External Hard Drives	USB Flash Drives

External Drives From Amazon

External Drives from TigerDirect

When I buy hard drives, I prefer Western Digital, but I have also have had good experience with Seagate. With USB drives, I don't really have a preference, other than low cost!

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Hard Drive Recovery

One of the reasons that you need backup is that hard drive failure is a common PC problem. If this is your problem, check out this link to learn about hard drive recovery.

To learn more - click Hard Drive Basics

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Two very Popular Backup Methods

External Hard drives are readily available for under $100. These usually hold 500Gigabytes of data, or more! This is one of your best backup methods! You can also use USB Flash Drives (provided you get one big enough for your data). USB Flash drives are available from 1 GB, and up to 16 GB, cheaply. You can get larger USB Flash drives, but the price goes up quickly. The big advantage of FLash drives is their small size.

Backing up your data requires planning. Your Backup Plan should cover the following:

• What data do you need to back up?

• How often do you need to back-up?

• How much capacity is needed to backup your information?

• Do I need additional hardware to accomplish these tasks?

• Do I need any special software for this?

What Files to include in Backup-Plan ?

Partial list of things you would want to save:

• My Documents

This is a folder that is commonly used by Microsoft operating systems and MS Office. It contains Word Files, Excel files, etc. A good backup plan would include moving other data files into this folder, to simplify backing up your system.

• My Favorites (Bookmarks)

This is a list of the sites that you frequently use, and to many of us we would hate to lose these! I copy My Favorites to My Documents (occasionally), so I at least have a copy somewhere! Why, because I constantly make copies of My Documents

• Address Books

To a business this is absolutely essential to save. The dollar value of this information can be huge! I export a file from Outlook periodically to My Documents, so that I have my address book and saved mail.

• Databases

These can be Microsoft Access files, Excel files, or other database programs. Usually contain files like accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory or other sales or financial data that is crucial to the health and safety of your business. These are not normally located in My Documents .

• Other Data Files

Many programs will store their files within their own program folder, which makes it difficult to know where they are located. A good back up strategy is to find these, then relocate them to my documents, if possible. If not, document their location, so that you know what to back up.

Now you know what to back up, you should also know sizes of these files. With this information, you should also determine how often to back up these files.

Ajax Company Backup-Plan

Once you’ve accumulated a list of what you need to backup, where it is, and how often, you then need to know how to back it up. So lets consider the alternatives.

Where to Backup?

Your Backup Plan has to have Device(s) to save your backup data, you must have some type of storage device to save the backup copies of your data. You have lots of options to choose from, but each one is a little different, so we'll help you find the device that will best meet your needs. There are a number of factors guiding you to select the most appropriate option, but let's just review the options first.

Type of Backup?

When would you like the backups to run?

If you're comfortable enough to remember doing your own backups, than a backup scheduler won't be as important for you. Keep in mind, if you are backing up to a removable device and the amount of data that you are backing up is larger that the capacity of your backup media, you will need more than one piece of media to complete the backup. This is called "spanning" and most likely requires that you physically insert a new piece of media when necessary.

This could put a damper on things if you were planning to run an unattended scheduled backup. To avoid spanning, you have to use one piece of backup media that has enough capacity to store your entire backup.

• Scheduled Backups - The backup software allows you to select a backup schedule, such as 9 P.M. every weekday, to automatically run a backup of your files.

• Manual Backup - This means that your Backup Plan is to run the backup yourself without any reminders.

Simple Backup Management Tips
Once you've established a backup routine, it would be wise to keep these few safe backup tips in mind.

Test your backups!

• Check your backup logs.

• Backup Plan should include a backup off-site!

Backup Plan should also include What will you for equipment, in case a loss of all your office equipment? You could arrange with another company to share their equipment, or use your home computer(s), etc.

My company assists many customers with a backup plan, because of their importance, and complexity. If you need professional help, see Computer Support