You have insurance on your car, you have insurance on the building that houses your business (or your home office) and yet many small business owners and professionals don’t carry “information insurance” when it comes to the important digital information stored on their store, office, or home-office PC. Honestly, in the business world, that just crazy! Especially when information insurance – namely, backing up important data from your PC – is one of the cheapest forms of protection you’ll ever buy.
For those that don’t know, “backing up” information on your PC means to simply make a copy of that information (in whatever form it takes; documents, spreadsheets, pictures, anything) and putting that copy on a storage device that’s not connected to your PC… and preferably, even in a different location than your PC (more on both of those concepts – devices and locations – in a moment). In the business world, we call this “mission critical” data… the information you need to work your business – and make money – every day. It can take the form of documents (just like records kept in a file cabinet), or spreadsheets (same concept, only the information stored there is usually numbers), and lots more… but those two items are usually the most important for business. What kind of documents are we talking about? Client records, legal papers, bills, invoices, lots more. And spreadsheets? Again, those are usually all about the numbers in business – money in, money out… bills paid, tax records, inventory, you name it. Some businesses may also have a lot of valuable information stored in pictures as well. Client photographs, product and project creation and development, etc.
The good news, when it comes to the storage of information like this, is that computers don’t care what it is when we humans use it – documents, spreadsheets, e-mail messages, pictures, downloaded music, it doesn’t matter. It’s all stores as data in a computer, in the various folders and disk drives inside (and connected to) your PC. To your PC (either IBM-style or Apple) information is stored as “bits and bytes” and it doesn’t matter if the bits are arranged as a legal document or a photo of your wife and kids from the last vacation, it doesn’t matter. That’s a good thing, since it makes our job of backing up and saving this information a bit more ‘standardized’ and easy.
Remember from above, I mentioned the need for an “external device” to store your stuff. If you’ve visited any of the warehouse clubs, office superstores or electronics stores, you’ve probably seen a whole row of devices for data storage. They’re called external because you can plug the device into your computer temporarily, copy your important data to the device, then unplug it and take it with you. Typically, those devices are simply a computer “hard drive” (the disk that stores information inside your PC) contained in it’s own little metal or plastic box, with data cables and power wires to connect to your PC and a/c outlet. Once connected, you can simply copy-and-paste your important data from the office PC to the storage device. Then unplug it and store it safely somewhere else. Prices for these devices (like most of other computer hardware you’ll see) have been falling lately, and you can have one that will easily store all your stuff (unless you’re a bigger business with bigger records and data storage needs) for less than $100.
The other important concept here is the idea that the device is portable. If you have an office (or storefront) with a computer and all it’s important data, and there’s some kind of disaster at the office (fire, flood, whatever) and that PC is damaged and the data lost, then it does you no good to have that backup device also stored in the same place. So you’ll need to get into the habit of storing that external backup device somewhere other than your regular place of business. For office and storefront operators, it’s easy just to put the storage device in your pocket and take it home. If you have a home office, you could put it in a bank safety deposit box, or something a lot simpler, like store it in a safe place in your car (not where it’s going to be bounced around or subjected to direct sunlight). That way, should there be an actual physical “disaster” at your office, you have your important data saved and in a safe place, ready to be installed on a new or replacement computer.
OK, I hope I’ve made the case for you to be sure you “mission critical” business information is backed up and safe. In future installments of this series, we’ll talk about some of the “best practices” for making backups at regular intervals… what kind of information needs to be backed up most often, and where it’s all found on your computer.
If you have any questions, please feel free to use the comment box below. I check it often for new posts, and will be happy to help as best I can.
