Data Recovery Planning

Recently I was interviewed by a writer for NBIZ magazine who was working on an article about disaster planning.  While this is not an area of expertise for Disc, Inc., it did lead to a conversation about our data recovery services.

Hopefully, you (or your company) have some kind of disaster plan already in place – especially when it comes to your data.  I know from experience that it’s much easier to plan ahead than to get caught floundering when faced with a potential crisis.  As part of my “IT” duties with a previous employer, I ran the daily backups, took my little cartridge home every night (or most nights…) and checked to make sure the backup ran every morning. When we were faced with the possibility of hurricane Katrina hurtling towards Houston, the VP and I dismantled the server, and loaded it into his car, hoping it would be safer at his house than at the office.  What we did not think about was paying careful attention to all of the cords we were unplugging while tearing the server apart or the fact that any work done that day would not be backed up.  Luckily for us, Katrina turned (sorry New Orleans) and our data was safe.  (It did, however, takes us an embarrassingly long time to reconnect the server.  So many wires! Now THAT was funny!)

Sound familiar? You have an automated backup in place. You verify that it runs as scheduled. But how often do you actually check the data on your backup? Have you ever?  Or are you assuming that since it ran, all is well?

Don’t wait until disaster strikes to find out! Check your data and make sure you know how to restore it when needed.  Losing critical data can cost you time and money. Data file recovery can cost you more time and money. Have a plan in place and run through it.

I know, I know.  You’ve heard this before…but are you doing it? All businesses, from solo-preneurs to large corporations are at risk when they’re data is missing.  Quit thinking about how awful it would be if your hard drive crashed or your flash drive broke, and put a solid plan in place.  Or don’t. Call Disc, Inc. and let us recover your laptop, external hard drive or media storage device when disaster strikes.  We won’t judge, but we did forewarn.