Preventive Medicine: How To Protect Your Data
THE HARD DRIVE
Why it’s so important and how to protect it
There are many components which make up your computer. Most are all easily replaceable, with the exception of the hard drive, which is where your data is stored. Why is it so important and how do you protect yourself against failure?
While the RAM and the processor affect the speed and the video card allows you to see what is going on, the hard drive is the filing cabinet where your data is stored. While some issues can be repaired by bringing it into Avenue M Computers, more complex data recovery procedures require a clean room to properly attempt data recovery. Therefore, we can not emphasize enough how important it is to protect your data.
Want to know what that broken sound in your hard drive may be?
Click HERE for a free hard drive simulator.
How to protect your data properly
Location – Make sure to keep your computer in a dry room, away from any possible flooding or leaks. Also, make sure not to place it on a carpet or any other static electric source.
Local Backup – Make sure your local backups are running smoothly. If there is a hard drive failure, the quickest way to get back up and running is to install a new hard drive and copy over the data from the backup to the new hard drive.
Want an even better approach? Set up a second hard within the desktop, and configure it to mirror the original hard drive. Therefore, if the hard drive fails, the second will continue running with all the information. When you replace the old hard drive, the data will automatically get copied onto it.
Online Backup – What happens if the entire machine or room gets destroyed or stolen? Therefore, it is recommend to have an online backup running in the background. This will allow your small office or home computer to have the same feel as the disaster recovery plans which larger businesses have in place. This will allow you to access your data (whether it is a particular folder or the entire hard drive) from any Internet connection.
Where else can your data be (if not on your hard drive)?
While you may be working off your computer, the data may actually be stored elsewhere. How is that possible?
1. Working off of the company’s server(s). When employees are working off a server their data may be stored on the company’s server and not the workstation your are working off of. Therefore, you may be able to log in with your credentials on any computer on the companies network and your desktop with all the associated settings will load.
2. When you are using a cloud based service. What is becoming more and more common are cloud based programs. They are programs which you access through any web browser and you are able to do your work via the Internet.
The difference between using the company’s server and a cloud based server is where the server is located. In the first example, the server is located in-house and the companies IT department manages and maintains the servers. While in a cloud based system, the provider manages and maintains the server and for a monthly fee, the users are allowed to log into the system and work.
Some examples of programs which are becoming more popular to access through the cloud include Office 365 , QuickBooks Online , Salesforce and webmail.
The inspiration behind this article
Over the past couple of weeks, one of our office computers started slowing down and last week we decided to investigate a little further. We found the hard drive was on its way out.
Since the hard drive was still working, we were able to retrieve all the data in a timely fashion with minimal downtime.
This also was a good time for us to triple check our disaster recovery plan and make sure all our data and backups are running as clockwork.
Does your computer show signs of failure?
Now is the best time to make sure the issue can be resolved or replaced – before the data is lost or requires a data center to recover!
Many times we are asked:
Which company should I purchase?
Here are some of our favorites…
BACKUP SOFTWARE:
DATA RECOVERY
Drive Savers – mention code DS26978 for special discount
Kroll Ontrack – email us for pricing
