Comp-U-News
from Comp-U-Talk
March 2008
March ... In like a lion, out like a lamb.
Supposedly all that lion and lamb stuff refers to weather patterns. But
today I wonder. It sure feels like it refers to events that create personal
crisis as well. And right now I feel as if it is not just one lion that is
roaring at me, but several lions.
Back when I was young (the day before yesterday -
and if you don't believe that then you need to keep your thoughts to
yourself) I was taught that people don't plain to fail, but rather, they
fail to plan. This is a valuable adage when attempting to sell whole life
insurance policies, and I have discovered that it is also valuabel in
regular everyday life. For instance, in my efforts to be thin and
beautiful, I have started planning and preparing dinners for a week at a
time. In my efforts to retire at an early age, I have started contributing
to a retirement fund. In my efforts to be healthy and able bodied when I
retire, I have started exercising regularly. I have made plans for my
future, and baring some catastrophic event, my plans "should" prevent future
failure.
So the question is this: If we are smart enough to
plan for our future well being; for our retirement, our children's
education, our exotic vacations, our summer cabins, our __________ (fill in
the blank), then why are we not smart enough to protect our valuable
computer data? I ask this, because I have faced not one, but two lions this
week, where rescuing important data was of paramount importance.
In both instances, it was painfully obvious that the
owners of the data didn't have a clue about data protection. And it wasn't
that they were stupid people, or that they had planned to fail. But rather,
they didn't understand the basics of file management, or how to create a cd,
or use an external drive. In short, they failed to have a disaster recovery
plan.
So my question to you is: If your computer crashed
right now would you be singing the blues? What if your well meaning
relative, friend, co-worker, acquaintance accidently erased all of your
data? What if your house/business burned to the ground, fell into the
ground, or became part of the ground at the bottom of a tsunami created
lake? Would your photos, documents, records be safe? Is your faith strong
enough to say "it's just stuff"? If reading this makes you cringe, then it's
time to do something. I would recommend a plan for immediate (if not sooner)
backup of your system.
The method of backup is not as important as the
frequency of the backup. If your data changes daily, then the backup should
be completed daily as well. CD's, DVD's, thumb drives and external drives
are all acceptable methods of creating backups. If you are unfamiliar with
the steps to create a backup, then please call us now. It is much more
pleasant to do preventative maintenance, than it is to do disaster
recovery.
