Disaster Recovery

Are you ready for an IT disaster? Are you prepared if one of your computers fails due to a hardware failure, are you prepared if a computer is stolen or your office is damaged by fire or water. My experience is that few businesses or individuals are adequately prepared to recover QUICKLY and COMPLETELY.

So what can you do?
First assess the cost of various failure scenarios. Next determine what you can do to reduce the cost of recovery. If there are items that are not replaceable; such as digital pictures of your children, then you need to create backup copies of these items quickly. You should think in terms of failure scenarios – the recovery solution that you implement for one failure scenario does not have to solve another less probable scenario. For example you may run file backups to another local system every day to prepare for failure of an individual computer. However you may only backup to tape once a week and take the tape offsite to prepare for loss of the entire office.
Solutions are often less costly than you think. External USB 2.0 disks are a cost effective backup solution. With these disks you can create an external backup solution for a few hundred dollars. Microsoft Windows has included backup software for many years so you don’t have to buy expensive software. However be careful where you store external backups, make sure they are in a media friendly environment and make sure they are SECURE. Consider your exposure if someone steals the backup.