Importance Of Recovery Planning

Posted by admin Monday, September 27, 2010 1 comments

Disasters are common in the world today, from nature to car wrecks.  In the computer industry, disasters aren’t any different.  They can come in the form of an office fire, computer crashes, hard drive failure, missing IT documents, stolen hardware, and many other forms.  Disasters can be very traumatic and stressful, although there are actions that you can take.

Even though disasters can occur at any time, recovery planning doesn’t cross the mind of business owners or individuals.  Most just carry out their normal day to day routines, never aware of what could result from a disaster.  Then, when disaster does strike, most tend to freak out and wonder just what they can do to fix the situation at hand.

If you are prepared for a disaster or hard drive failure, then your business will be able to deal with anything that happens.  The first step in planning and preparing for disaster is to analyze your business or operations.  You should determine how often your systems go down, and how you can manage operations without the equipment.  You should also find out how long it would take you to fix the equipment, and what your business can do to make ends meet when the equipment is unavailable.

Something else you’ll need to do is identify the risks of possible disaster.  This can include computer failure, loss of power, hardware problems, etc.  You should always include the causes as well as the solution in your plans.  If your office suffers from disaster and cannot be used for a period of time, you should always have another location that you can go to continue your business. 

In the event of disaster, you should always have a dedicated team that will work on fixing any problems.  This team should be responsible for your recovery plan and hold regular meetings to make sure that everything is accurate.  Then, if disaster should strike, your team should be well enough prepared to take care of anything that comes your way.

On a frequent basis, you should create backups of your IT systems and test the backups that you have created.  Always make sure that the backups you made are in a safe place, and out of the way of harm.  You should also check with your disaster recovery team as well, and make sure that they have the location of your backups noted in their recovery plans.

One of the most important aspects of recovery and disaster planning is to keep an up to date inventory on all of your equipment and material.  You should always stay on top of this, to make sure that you can easily identify what you have and how to go about replacing equipment whenever something happens.  If you keep a record of your suppliers and their phone numbers, you can have them with you for easy access in the event of an emergency.

Even though it may be easier to document all of your recover plans on your computer, you should also record them on paper as well.  Disasters can render your computers useless, which would it very hard to access plans that are stored on your IT systems.  If you have them noted on paper as well, you can access them without any problems.

Above everything else, you should always think about the possible disasters that can occur at any time and how to be prepared for them.  If you think about things and plan things out before hand, you’ll find that you can handle any type of disaster.  This way - a disaster doesn’t have to stop you from carrying out your normal day to day operations.

Backup Data On Your Laptop

Posted by admin Friday, September 24, 2010 0 comments

If you were to look at past statistics regarding the information that has been lost in regards to laptop computers, you would find yourself amazed.  Even though this information can be astounding, many of us still don’t take the time to back up the information on our laptops.

To put it in simple terms, nothing in the computer industry is fool proof.  Hard drives can crash, the laptop can get stolen, or it can even be dropped and rendered useless.  To ensure that we are never left without our precious data, we should always create a backup of our information.

There is no mistaken the fact that over a million laptops have been stolen over the years in the United States alone.  Anytime a laptop is stolen, chances are that it won’t be recovered.  If the information wasn’t backed up, then the owner will be left with no laptop - but more importantly - no backed up data either.

Just like you can with desktop computers, you can also create a backup of the data on your laptop as well.  You can use online services, back it up remotely, or use several other methods to ensure that you keep all of your data.  Preserving your data is something you should really look into, especially if you have business material on your laptop.

The best way to go about backing up your data and files is to burn them to a data CD.  Data CDs can hold up to 700 MB (Mega Bytes) of data, which means a lot of files.  To back things up this way, all you need is a CD/RW burner in your laptop, which most of the newer ones come with.

The only drawback to laptops is the fact that they don’t offer near as much storage or security measures as a desktop PC.  Desktop computers have a lot more power, and they can also do things (including backups) in a fraction of the time.

The laptop computer was designed for on the go use, which is the main reason why people don’t really think about backing up their data.  When the thought finally does come to mind, it is normally too late to do anything about it.

As mentioned above, the easiest and quickest way to backup your laptop data is to use an online backup service.  Depending on your connection to the Internet, it can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours.  Although it may take you a little bit of time, you’ll have the satisfaction in knowing that your data is there if something should happen.

Whether it’s for your business or personal use, you can’t go wrong backing up your data.  You should always create a backup of your data at least once a month, even more than that if you have a lot of important information that you add to your laptop on a frequent basis.

Data Recovery Procedures

Posted by admin Thursday, September 23, 2010 0 comments

No matter who you are, where you work, or what type of computer you use - your computer data is always as risk.  With viruses, power surges, thunderstorms, natural disasters, human mistakes, and hackers around, the threats are always real.  To be on the safe side, you’ll need to back up your files and keep doing it on a regular basis.  In the event of your hard drive failing, you’ll need data recovery - which is the only option available.

Before you travel down that long road of data recovery, there are some things to keep in mind.  If you are using your computer and a program starts to act funny, you should shut things down immediately.  You may also hear some very odd sounds as well, which is the first sign that your hard driving is working overtime.  If you shut your computer down immediately at this point, you may prevent data loss from happening.  If you don’t shut your computer down and allow the failing hard drive to continue running, it is only a matter of time before it destroys itself - which will ultimately result in the loss of data.

If this happens, and you lose all of your data, you should never try to fix the hard drive yourself unless you know exactly what to do.  At this stage, professional data recovery services aren’t just a luxury - they are something you must have.  The process for data recovery is time consuming, and requires both tools and a clean work environment.  Trying to repair a hard drive on your own is very challenging, and could end up making matters far worse if you don’t know what you are doing.

Even though there are software out there for data recovery, you shouldn’t use them unless you know what you are doing.  With most hard drive problems being very intricate, software can do more harm than good.  Even though companies may claim that their software will fix the problem and, retrieve your data, you should always use caution and simply avoid the use of do it yourself software.

To be on the safe side with your hard drive and retrieve the data that you lost, you should always turn to a local data recovery service.  This way, you’ll know that your hard drive is in good hands and it will be fixed the right way.  Professional services can fix nearly any hard drive problem, and recover any type of data.  In some cases, your hard drive may be beyond repair, even for professional data recovery specialists.  If this happens, you should be prepared to buy a new hard drive - and count your blessings that you thought to back up your data in advance.