Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Don't forget about backups

Just wanted to share a lesson with you...

Whether you are a small business, individual or large organization, remember having a backup plan is essential.

Business Example:
My company lost its email server a few weeks ago. Quite a few mailboxes were corrupted. These users lost all the emails in their IMAP accounts. These emails contained important customer conversations, customer agreements, passwords and well it email you know how essential it is. And remember for you users email is a primart form of communication but is also essential business communication. Many of our customers submit purchase orders, signed invoices and credit references via email. No company can survive without purchase orders. A few weeks later it crashed again, before we had time to set up the backup strategy. This time we were able to restore all the emails. We have also started backing our systems up. Hopefully we won't have a glitch again, but at least this time we will be more prepared.

Personal example:
A friend of mine signed up for a nifty photo storage/sharing online service. He stored all of his baby pictures and other picture's from the first year of his son's life there. He thought since they were located remotely they were safe. Well after about 2 years the company went out of business. He didn't get to save his photos locally..and he lost all of those memories. Now he saves them on a web service, his computer and on an optical disk.

So I recommend you backup to a DVD, email account, .Mac account, external hard drive. Well everywhere. Try to cover all the bases. Since we use our computers for everything from photos, movies, address book and bills be sure to keep your info protected.

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