Are You Protecting Your Business Data?

We have all done it – we forgot to back up our computer and it crashed.  And, since Murphy’s Law runs overtime with computers, the crash was probably at the worst possible time.

Case in Point: My husband is working on a big project for his company, and he has lots of data on his ancient (5 years old) laptop.  You guessed it – his hard drive crashed.  And, of course, he had been so busy working on the project, he forgot to back up his data.  He discovered he hadn’t backed up in over a week.  Guess what he has been doing the last few days?  Yep.  Reconstruction.

How Do You Back Up Your Company Data?

External hard drive. My MacBook has a “timeline” system and I have an external hard drive. The system backs up every hour, then compresses every day, every week, every month.  It’s great. As long as I have the external drive plugged in, I don’t have to think about backing up data. You can do the same thing with a Windows-based system; look for a large external hard drive with software that allows you to schedule backups.

Online backup. Several business owner friends use Carbonite.  It puts a small application on your computer and searches for files that are new or changed, and it backs up the files to an online site while your computer is idle (you do have to sleep sometime).  Carbonite also allows you to access your files remotely from any computer with Internet access.

Off-site backup. A dentist friend backs up every night before she goes home.  She loads her important appointment and financial files on a flash drive and takes them home.  She switches back and forth between two flash drives so she is never more than a day behind.

How do you protect your business data? Do you use multiple backups? Which do you think is safest for your small business data?

Image: Waffler@flickr