Unix Backup and Recovery

How Serious Is Your Company About Backups?

I’ve heard it all. I’ve been accused of caring only about backups. It’s been said that I think the whole world revolves around a cartridge reel. I’ve said that someday the world’s going to crash, and I’m going to have the backup. The question is: how serious are you about protecting your data? To help you come to a decision in this matter, let’s talk about what will happen if you don’t have good backups.

What Will Lost Data Cost You?

To answer this question, you need to consider what kind of data you are backing up. This is a perfect time to include people who may not consider themselves computer people. Get input from other departments to answer this question. When all those 1s and 0s come together, just what kind of stuff are we talking about? Do you use manual accounting methods, or are your company’s financial records stored in some accounting software somewhere? When a customer calls in and orders something, do you jot that down on a carbon-copied order form, or do you enter it in some sort of order processing program? What about things like budgets, memoranda, inventories, and any other “paperwork” that you throw around from day to day? Do you keep copies of every important memo that you send, or do you depend on the computer for that?

If you’re like most people, you have grown quite dependent on these things we call computers. You forget how much of your work has been saved in the form of little magnetized bits spread out across ...