Avoiding Data Disaster

According to business surveys, almost two thirds of vital data on business computers is unprotected. For small-office and home-office computers, we can imagine the percentage is far greater, probably something like four out of five.

Imagine- you start work at the beginning of a day to find all your data gone. All your emails, photos, data, applications- vanished.

What would your first reaction be?

If you have well-kept backups, such a scenario may well not even wrinkle your brow.

But if you have no backups, even reading this may prompt a twinge of the churning stomach and blind panic that accompanies such a disaster.

So, gird your loins... and get on with the necessary. You'll be very relieved you did.

Make partitions

It helps to install an extra harddrive in your machine (even 250Gb drives now are quite cheap, so it is worth doing right away.) What you can do is partition the drive (apportion the space to 'belong' to different drives, so it looks like there are several different discs when in reality you're just using one) - if you use a PC, software like Parition Magic or System Commander is essential to do this, unless you are a technical genius.
Partition Magic
System Commander

Make two different partitions:The first one will be for your current data. The second one will be for another copy of your operating system with all the software you normally use installed.

Make sure at the end of every day or week that a copy of all your work exists on both drives.

So, if your original hard disk goes wrong just before the deadline of an important project, you can continue on the other without spending a day reinstalling software.

Store backups externally

The above method protects you from accidental data loss due to software or hardware failure, but what happens if somebody steals your computer, or a fire breaks out?
The ideal scenario is to have at least 3 copies of your data in existence at any one time.

At Rechord, we've developed our own idosyncratic way of backing up, but it works with the minimum of fuss once set up. We use a program called AllWay Sync, (and comes free for moderate personal use) which watches our data continually throughout the day, and automatically copies new or changed data files to an external hard disk. At the end of the day, one of us takes the external hard disk home. This means that, should disaster befall the Rechord office, while we're out, we can continue our work exactly where we left off. To avoid the mass of data getting too big, once we've finished a particular project, we archive it onto CD or DVD and store it in a different location.
Try AllWay Sync


Run a virus scan before you backup

Use a virus checker to make sure your backup copies aren't being infected by viruses as you make them.

Try to design a proper virtual filing method for yourself and stick to it even if it means spending slightly more time on naming and saving files. That way you will know where everything is, when you worked on it, and where it should go back, in the event of a catastrophe.