By Dave Bour, Desktop Solution Center
This blog is copies of articles published for the Millcroft Magazine, a local mag for residents of Burlington’s Millcroft Neighbourhood by Best Version Media. Hope you enjoy it.
A brief intro, I’m a long term resident of Millcroft having lived here since 1997 and a resident of Burlington since 1992. I’ve have been involved with computers and technology for almost 20 years before that.
People often ask me what is the one piece of advice I’d recommend to them. The answer is tragically simple. BACK UP! Is it not IF you will have a failure, but simply a question of WHEN.
I say tragically because most people don’t bother until they have a crisis at which point it become critical and often expensive.
If I could get people to do regular backups, it would easily eliminate 75% of my new business. Yes, not good for business but I’d rather get you as a client in a less stressed out state and educate you on other practices you should be doing too.
Once you start to backup, make multiple copies and check them periodically too because all media fail at some point too. Even keep one off site in case the worst case happens.
There are thousands of web sites with statistics that report the number of businesses that fail after the loss of computer data so I won’t bother repeating that.
The business case most people understand but I’ve also seen clients lose family photos and videos where they were the only ones they had of their children and parents, obscure music collections that are impossible to replace and other personal bits of information.
The same principles applies to what we have on our phones now too as we often have gigabytes of data of photos and videos there that we don’t want to lose either.
Today, we have insurance for our house and cars in the event something happens. Most people understand that. Look at backup as simply an insurance in the event that something happens
Computers can be amazing tools and it’s incredible what we can do with them today. That said, they can cause so much stress at times too. People make mistakes. Viruses, malware and ransomware are commonplace today. Disks fail. Backups are one way to eliminate one of the major causes of stress that I see.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me.
Dave Bour
Providing Complete IT Peace of Mind
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