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Data Backups - One Key to Business Survival
Your customer data is a precious resource that can literally be worth its weight in gold! If used properly, it can be repeatedly mined for additional sales and referrals. Do you use this gold mine to increase the profitability of your business?
You should! It can mean the difference between business survival and failure.
Why then do so few business owners take the time to ensure that it is adequately protected? Are we too busy? Perhaps you just did not know how to protect it, or could not afford the software and hardware required to back up your data correctly.
Ask yourself these questions:
Is there anything more important to my business than my customer data? What would happen to my business if I were to loose all of my data?
Consider this common scenario. A client calls frantic that she would loose her business if she could not recover her customer data. She had over five years of information on her computer when the hard drive decided to make her life interesting.
So what are her choices? Renter the data manually, if she has any hard copies available. Call everyone and ask for his or her contact information again, will not that make him or her feel secure about your company. Alternatively, you could call a data recovery technician. Their services can start at a thousand dollars and go up rapidly from there!
Windows XP provides a fully functional backup utility, free! In fact, many of the commercial backup products use this backup to save the data. All you are paying for is the user interface, the window into which you enter information.
Before you run the setup wizard, you need to answer a few questions.
What data do I need to backup?
Only backup data that is necessary. Use the KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) method. Your customer database and correspondence should be backed up as a minimum.
How often do I want to back up my data?
How often does your customer data change? Does a significant amount of data change on a daily basis? Weekly?
Where do I want to store my data backup?
Most data backups still use a tape drive to store the data. The problem is that they cost a fortune! The tapes alone are expensive. Alternatives are to store your data backup on another computer on your network or copy it to a CD or DVD writable disk.
Ok, so
you want to backup your data. What now? Before we do that review the table below:
Full Backup
Copies and stores a complete duplicate of your data every time it runs. Takes the most time to run and the most storage space.
Quickest data recovery feature.
Easiest!
Incremental Backup
Copies and stores only data changed since the last backup. Must be combined with a full backup, and any other incremental backups.
Most complicated.
Deferential Backup
Copies and stores data changed since the last full backup. Must be combined with a full backup and the last deferential backup.
Middle of the road.
If you have a relatively small amount of data, I would suggest a daily full backup. If you have a larger amount of data, you might combine the full backup with a deferential backup. Simple huh?
The next question is how to store the data backup. Even though it takes a little extra work, I have my clients back their data up to a DVD writable disk. First, set the wizard to back the data up to a folder. Usually this folder is on another computer. Then burn this data to a DVD burner and place the disk it in a secure location for retrieval as necessary.
If you do not feel comfortable setting this up yourself, any competent PC technician can do it for you. If you want to do it yourself, click on the following link and it will take you to a tutorial located on my website.
WINDOWS BACKUP WIZARD TUTORIAL
Whether you do the setup yourself or have it setup by a professional technician you are taking the first step in ensuring the long-term survival of your business. Please take the time to do this.
Ultimately your customers do not care how or why you lost their information, they just care that you did. I will leave you with this statistic:
Estimates suggest that 80% of small businesses that suffer a serious computer failure cease trading within two years. Will yours be one of them?
About the Author
Rick Parrott, MCP - SA Secure, a San Antonio Texas company specializing in desktop support and help desk services for small to medium businesses. Our goal is to provide an alternative to maintaining an expensive in-house IT staff or relying on many different individual computer repair technicians. Visit our website: http://www.sasecure.net
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Tom's Hardware |
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www.tomshardware.com |
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HardwareCentral - Your source for in-depth computer hardware info. |
HardwareCentral is the #1 Hardware Information Resource on the 'Net. Featuring over 600 pages of Hardware information, including advice on System ... |
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Apple - Hardware |
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Ace Hardware |
Nationwide (United States) hardware and home improvement retailer. Includes products, dealer locator and corporate information. |
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Computer hardware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
The hardware of a computer is infrequently changed, in comparison with software and ... Personal computers, the computer hardware familiar to most people, ... |
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Hardware - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
Hardware is the general term that is used to describe physical artifacts of a technology. ... In a looser sense, hardware can be major military equipment, ... |
en.wikipedia.org |
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Open Directory - Computers: Hardware |
Hardware Central - Computing-centric community providing vital information, support, tools and interaction facilities for power computer users and ... |
dmoz.org |
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Microsoft Hardware � Home Page |
Learn about Microsoft mice, keyboards, desktop sets, webcams, media center peripherals, gaming products, fingerprint readers and presentation tools. |
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AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news |
Independent hands-on reviews of computer hardware such as motherboards, graphic cards, and CPUs. |
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Supplier of new and refurbished networking hardware and approved and compatible network accessories. Located in the United Kingdom. |
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Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters |
From the article: "Although the news caused barely a ripple of reaction in the audience of software and hardware engineers, there are industry analysts who ... |
hardware.slashdot.org |
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InformationWeek HardwareTech Center |
Our hardware coverage ranges from mobile computers and PDAs to servers and supercomputers, and the infrastructure issues enterprises deal with every day. ... |
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This page describes the term hardware and lists other pages on the Web where you can find additional information. |
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Google Directory - Computers > Hardware |
Hardware Central - http://www.hardwarecentral.com/ Computing-centric community providing vital information, support, tools and interaction facilities for ... |
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Gifts: Unique Gifts & Gift Ideas at Restoration Hardware |
At Restoration Hardware, you'll explore an exceptional world of high quality unique gifts. Browse our products to find gift ideas & more at Restoration ... |
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HwB: The Hardware Book |
HwB provides you with circuits, pinouts, cable/adapter descriptions and other technical information. |
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Reg Hardware: Product News and Gadget Reviews from The Register |
More Gadgets Stuff. 5th December 2006 12:09 GMT. Author: Reg Hardware ... 27th November 2006 15:31 GMT. Author: The Hardware Widow ... |
www.reghardware.co.uk |
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red hat hardware compatibility lists |
hardware.redhat.com/ - Similar pages |
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TrueValue.com |
Here's our tip to hang strands of lights with ease. Jeanenne & Jim Tucker Plantation True Value Hardware Richmond, TX ... |
www.truevalue.com |
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A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware |
A complete illustrated Guide to the PC Hardware, Logic and Architecture. 500 easy-read articles about the modern PC. Understand the basic architecture of ... |
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