Case History 06 July 09 - Why Backup
How a Good Backup Program Saved the Day
A business customer was working on her end of year financials. She turned off her computer to take a lunch break. When she returned her computer would not boot. After troubleshooting the problem it was revealed that the hard drive failed.
The drive was fairly new, and was still in warranty. It would be replaced an no charge, but her data was lost.
This could have been one of those computer nightmares, but it wasn’t.
You probably get tired of hearing your “computer guy” telling you to backup, but if you had to suffer through a complete data lose you would understand his persistence.
In March we imaged the customer’s hard drive. This is a procedure that creates an exact duplicate of the disk, including:
Operating System
All Windows Settings
All Email Settings
All Web Browser Settings
All programs and program settings
All data at the time of the image.
Each week the customer performed a regular backup of her data:
Financial files
Word Documents
Pictures
MYOB data
Music
Without the Image and regular backups it would have been a 12 hour job getting the new drive set up and installing Windows and all the programs. It would have taken the customer weeks to input the data, if she was lucky enough to have hard copies of most of it.
With a recent Image and regular backups the system was up and running in 2 hours. It looked, felt, and was exactly as the computer was at the date of the last backup.
The only thing missing was recent emails. The customer felt she could live without them, but decided to include important emails in future backups.
A business customer was working on her end of year financials. She turned off her computer to take a lunch break. When she returned her computer would not boot. After troubleshooting the problem it was revealed that the hard drive failed.
The drive was fairly new, and was still in warranty. It would be replaced an no charge, but her data was lost.
This could have been one of those computer nightmares, but it wasn’t.
You probably get tired of hearing your “computer guy” telling you to backup, but if you had to suffer through a complete data lose you would understand his persistence.
Why the Disaster Was Only a Minor Irritation
In March we imaged the customer’s hard drive. This is a procedure that creates an exact duplicate of the disk, including:
Operating System
All Windows Settings
All Email Settings
All Web Browser Settings
All programs and program settings
All data at the time of the image.
Each week the customer performed a regular backup of her data:
Financial files
Word Documents
Pictures
MYOB data
Music
Without the Image and regular backups it would have been a 12 hour job getting the new drive set up and installing Windows and all the programs. It would have taken the customer weeks to input the data, if she was lucky enough to have hard copies of most of it.
With a recent Image and regular backups the system was up and running in 2 hours. It looked, felt, and was exactly as the computer was at the date of the last backup.
The only thing missing was recent emails. The customer felt she could live without them, but decided to include important emails in future backups.
Your Hard Drive Will Fail It Is Just a Question of When
Talk with your IT professional and arrange to set up a regular backup policy. If you are lucky enough to live in the Redland City area of Brisbane we would be happy to help
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