Creating Your Disaster Recovery Plan

As businesses rely more heavily on information technology, the potential damage caused by an IT disaster to a business’s success increases dramatically. Your ability to save your business in the event of a severe hardware malfunction depends a great deal on whether you have a Disaster Recovery plan ready and staff that is ready to implement it.

Preparing for Disaster Recovery

The first step in creating your Disaster Recovery plan is to recognize potential problems, based on the hardware you are using, the way your hardware is being used by your employees, and the location of your hardware. You need to plan for all types of potential problems including:

• Purposeful damage by disgruntled employees.
• Theft (physical) and data theft (hacking).
• Environmental issues related to your geographical area.
• Age and reliability of hardware.
• The adding and deletion of technology and editing of sensitive server files.

You should go over with your staff how these potential problems could occur, how they can be prevented, but also the worst case scenarios based on the severity of these potential disasters. This will help your business prepare for Disaster Recovery, should it need to occur, as well as understand what may go wrong so it can more easily be found and addressed.

Developing Your Plan

Once you have gone over the potential problems that can occur with your data it is time to develop a plan for Disaster Recovery that your staff will be ready to implement. Your staff should be well versed in what to do in the event you lose your data, with each employee knowing their exact role in order to make the process smooth and simple.

Your first step should be to have a set budget for Disaster Recovery. Time spent fixing problems is time not working, and several pieces of hardware may need to be immediately replaced (i.e. Network Storage Server). All of these can be fairly extensive costs to your company if it has not been properly budgeted. It may also be a good idea to purchase insurance on your hardware that you can use to easily replace the pieces that are missing/damaged.

The next step is to draft the Disaster Recovery plan. For obvious reasons, the plan should be printed on paper with multiple copies available and the name of the individual who is supposed to perform a specific action clearly outlined. Each step should be carefully described and written in clear language.

Once you have written out your Disaster Recovery plan, you should practice it – especially when there is turnover within your company. Once you have created, practiced, and prepared for Disaster Recovery, the process should be much easier.

Benefits of Online Backup

The goal of backing up your files is to save your data if anything should happen to your hard drive. If your hard drive crashes for any reason, simply open the backup file (using the Backup Program used) and all of your data will be restored as new. A successful backup will make it as though your hard drive crashing never occurred, taking much of the stress out of what can be a stressful incident.

However, backups can be imperfect. When you have performed a backup, our backup is saved as a file. Once you have that file, you have a few options:

• Save the file to your hard drive.
• Save your file to an external hard drive.
• Save your file to a memory card.

Each of these options creates a problem, however. If your hard drive completely crashed, you will not have access to the file in order to restore it. And if anything happens to your memory card or external hard drive (which, if your hard drive crashing was due to environmental problems such as a flood, is very possible), the same problems occur.

One of the solutions to this problem is to Backup Online. When you Backup Online, your backup file is saved on the Internet, where it can be accessed from any computer at any time. This file cannot be damaged by the environment, nor can it be harmed by a potential virus or other problematic computer issues.

To Backup Online, all you need to do is sign up for one of the many services available. A variety of companies, especially anti-virus companies, allow you to Backup Online for a nominal fee. You can also schedule a weekly or even daily backup to occur in order to ensure that all of your files can be restored.

When it comes to the safety of your files and documents, no amount of precautions is too great. While the availability of options for backing up your computer are plentiful, many of these options still present risks that can occur when the backup file is on a single location.

However, when you Backup Online, you have the opportunity to make absolutely sure that your file is and will be available in the case of emergency. Only when you Backup Online do you have that kind of confidence, and it is a confidence that, when it comes to your data, you should not be without.

The Vital Role of Home Backup For Your PC

For many individuals, backing up data is meant for businesses only. Their data is more valuable, and should they lose access to their documents, spreadsheets, and other files, their entire business can go down with it.

But a Home Backup is equally as important. Every day you send and receive files, photos, videos and music. Many people work from home or have children that do homework – each of these creates data that can be lost in the event of a computer crash.

In addition, your home is far more prone to problems that do not tend to occur with the high end equipment used in businesses. That equipment is often held in individually cooled rooms with backup power generators and the world’s most powerful surge protectors. In your home, a simple flood or electrical surge can completely wipe out your data, leaving you without any of the files you had taken for granted.

That is why a Home Backup becomes such a useful tool for saving your files and ensuring that your data is not lost forever. In addition, a Home Backup is a simple and easy task. Windows XP and Windows Vista both come with their own Home Backup and Restore programs that you can run to quickly back up your data and restore it again if necessary.

How Do You Run a Home Backup?

To backup your computer, simply go to the start menu, click on “Programs,” then “Accessories,” then “System Tools.” There you will see the backup and restore program. Click on it, and you get the option to set up your next Home Backup. You can choose from one of three options:

• Incremental – Creates a new backup while saving the old backup. The new backup records only the changes made to the files saved in the older backups.
• Differential – Creates a new backup file but saves the changes that were made since the last full backup.
• Full – Completely backs up your files.

For those that have never backed up their hard drive before, or are planning on making changes to their system, the full backup is recommended. Once you have completed the backup your computer will save a .bfk file which you can save to a hard drive. Should anything happen to your computer, simply open the file and your computer will be back to the way it was at the time of the backup.

A Home Backup is a useful tool for ensuring that your files and settings get saved in case of emergency. And since a home backup is so easy to run with Windows Vista and XP, there is simply no excuse not to back up your files just in case you require the services of a Backup And Restore feature.