RedZoneComputers.com

At the end of every year you see all kinds of media reports on the top 10 things of the past year.

I’m not going to do a top 10 list for the past year, but I am going to talk about the number one most import computer issue for 2008 and the future.

Drum roll please!!! 

My number one computer issue for 2008 was computer data backups.

The sad fact is that most computer users are not backing up their data at all or the backups they are doing are not being performed regularly or correctly. As a result people are losing very important data when they have a serious computer crash.

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself as we go into the New Year:

• Do you have backup software installed on your computer?
• Are you worried about losing all of your photos, music and important financial data?
• Do you run regular backups?
• If you are running backup software what files are you backing up?
• Do you backup your computer data to a CD, DVD, tape drive, or to the Internet?
• Do you know what you would do if your had a sudden loss of your data?

As you can see in these questions…

Not only do you need to backup your data, you must back it up somewhere where it will be safe and accessible when you need to retrieve the data.

I hear this from lots of computer users– “sure Robb I backup my data everyday.”

Then I find out they backup their data to the same hard drive where the original data is located.

YIKES!!!

Yup…

You get it just like I do… 

If that hard drive crashes, the backup is gone as well. You don’t want to create backups just for the sake of creating backups. Everyone needs to have a backup strategy whether you are one person or big company.

Your backup strategy should be as follows:

1. Backup you data by using a commercially available software solution
2. Determine what data you must backup and how much space you need to store the backup data.
3. Create a one time full backup and then backup up changes to that data regularly.
4. Test restoring selected data every month or so.

Right now I am working on creating an instructional video as part of my Geek Secrets Series that will show you step-by-step how to do this. I’ll keep you up to date on the progress of the video.

After determining your strategy, you need to create your own disaster recovery plan statement.

Here is a simple example of a disaster recovery plan statement:

• I will use Mozy online backup software which has unlimited backup storage.
• I will create a full backup of all my photos, music, documents, financial files and my profile on (Insert Date).
• I will schedule Mozy to backup any changes to my files whenever my computer sits idle for more than 30 minutes.
• I will test restoring a least 3 randomly selected files every month.

I recommend using an Internet based backup tool such as Mozy as it costs less than $60 dollars a year for unlimited backups. Using Mozy means you don’t have to worry about choosing what data is most important to backup as you can back up everything…

All your financial records…

All your photos…

All your music….

And you can back it all up securely with a service like Mozy as it runs powerful encryption on all of your data. I run Mozy and my clients are running Mozy. Make it your New Years resolution to backup your important data by signing up for Mozy right now.

Happy New Year and Happy Computing!