I remember my first computer teacher relaying this very important piece of wisdom. “There are two types of computer users – those who have lost their data and those about to.”
Disaster can strike at any minute – a web server getting fried or even a power surge in your own system. In one second, much or even all you may have worked on may disappear; unless of course you regularly back up. Backing up is something we all know we should be doing, but more often than not we don’t do it enough – or at all.
I was speaking to someone tonight who is paying the price for not backing up. A few hours downtime already while he struggles to breathe life into what appears to be a dodgy hard drive. If the drive is cactus, the only option left is data recovery. This will mean a couple more days downtime and the cost for the recovery service will be anywhere from $500 – $2000. That sounds pretty steep but as one technician said to me a while ago, “Well, how much is your data worth?”
In regards to your web sites, don’t trust your web host to maintain backups. It doesn’t matter what type of great backup scheme they have in place or what whizz-bang equipment they use to help ensure reliability and recovery in a disaster; stuff happens – and their terms of service will usually have that disclaimer as well.
Backing up your online and offline data can be a pain; it’s certainly one of the more mundane tasks of running an online business; but ask yourself – where would you be if your hard drive died this minute and you had no backup
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