Just got off the phone with a company that lost 5 weeks of client bookkeeping data because they didn’t have good backups, they aren’t very happy.
Here’s the scoop: just because you are swapping tapes doesn’t mean that you are actually getting a backup. You need to test the backup to make sure it is working. We have seen cases where the actual logs say that the backup was successful, but the backup data was actually corrupted. Here’s how to test your backups and make sure they are good:
- Take a file that you have been recently working on and rename it to zmytest.zzz
- Contact the person who is responsible for your backups and ask them to restore a copy of the original file. (don’t tell them you renamed, tell them you deleted it by mistake)
- If they can’t at least get you a copy from yesterday, you have a problem.
We could have saved them thousands of dollars: (how much would it cost your company to lose 5 weeks of work?)
With our Fixed IT program, we address this whole backup issue by doing nightly backups, checking the logs every day, and restoring your files once a month to make sure they are good. We suggest you do this as a minimum! If you would rather not worry about it get on our Fixed IT program… or be prepared to lose 5 weeks of client work once in a while.
Cheers!
–Bruce McCully
