How critical is you data?

I was talking to a guy last week about general techie stuff when he said “We don’t bother with backing up our data as we do everything on paper”  You can imagine my surprise when he said this especially since he worked for a law firm!!

This got me thinking.  How long would my business survive if I lost all my data? I am not talking about software but rather all my client data, invoices emails etc.  All the stuff that a small business uses on a daily basis.  The answer is not very long.

I had a customer yesterday who had a faulty hard drive.  When I gave him the price to install a new one, recover his files and reinstall Windows Vista he went white (it wasn’t that high by the way).  When I explained he could lose all his data if his hard drive completely failed or if he was lucky he would be able to retrieve some of it back by sending it off to lab (costing hundreds) I thought he would faint.  His data was critical to him but he had never considered how much.

So if all this data is critical why don’t people or businesses better protect it by backing it up. The answer in my experience is lazyiness.  People generally don’t think about it as they have never had it happen to them.  I had a client once who said that “Their systems had never gone down so why would they start now” (I am not joking!!).  I tried to point out that if the hard drive in any on the systems on the network failed they could lose data (no backup system in place).  I was met with “Never happened before”.  People will only start to listen when they have to dig deep into their pockets to rectify a situation that should never have happened in the first place.

My data is critical so I will keep backing it up (and checking it too!!) but how critical is your data?

About the Author

Hi I am Chris Wakefield the owner of ComTech IT Support. I provide Windows and Linux based IT Support, laptop repairs and computer repairs to both business and personal clients in and around Stirling.

For a list of what I can offer you why not visit my website www.comtech247.net where you will find a list of my services, testimonials, blog and much more.