As consultants, there is one thing that is arguably more important than anything else we might ever do. It’s not our business plan, our marketing, or our accounting system. It’s not even taking the best care of our clients. In fact it’s even more fundamental and yet most often ignored by more people and the source of great suffering and heartache. I’m talking about backing up our data.
“The truth is—our data is our entire business.”
Our client lists, email correspondence, project plans and everything else we’ve ever created, or saved is the only thing standing between us and massive personal and professional loss.
It Can’t Happen To Me
It’s almost funny, isn’t it? We can put this critical task off till later thinking that, somehow, it’s never going to happen to us. No, not OUR hard drive, it’ll be fine for at least another day, right?
What is so insidious is that, in general, it seems like we can actually get away with no backups for a very long time! Or can we? The scary part is that the longer we’ve gone without backing up our data, the more borrowed time our data is living on and the bigger the crash will be when the day of reckoning finally arrives.
When our hard drive’s platters finally screech to a halt, and the read/write heads dig neat little grooves into the delicate magnetic material that holds everything we value, it’s just possible we’ll never see our files again. But there’s an easy way to all but guarantee the perfect safety of our data. As consultants, we can’t be too careful with our intellectual property, since this is our business and without it, we’ve got nothing. Our data’s safety and security is everything.
Can You Really Wait Another Day?
Today, I’d like to convince you to backup your data if you haven’t yet, and if you already have a backup system in place, I hope I can suggest some ways to make your backups even easier and more comprehensive. The hardest part about backing up a hard drive is choosing from the vast array of methods, hardware and software and then figuring out how to make everything work together properly. I recommend a 4-step approach.
Note: Moving files from the internal hard drive to another hard drive, or burning files to a CD and then deleting them from the first drive does not count as a backup. You must have a least one current copy of your files and preferably two.
The Four-Step Plan
1. Get an external hard drive if you don’t already have one. I like to get a drive that’s at least 50% larger than the drive I’m backing up so that I have room as my data collection grows. The MyBook brand of hard drives by Western Digital are good, reliable drives that are easy to setup on either Windows or Mac computers.
2. Get a program that will automate every aspect of the backup process for you and even allow you to boot from your backup in a worst case scenario. There are free programs, but here’s the thing; many of the free apps don’t have decent support and tend to more technically challenging to install and operate.
- Do yourself a favor and invest in a decent application that you will use for many years to come and upon which you can truly rely. I recommend Acronis® True Image Home 2010 for Windows users.
- For Mac users, get Super Duper, by Shirt Pocket Software. (You might also use Time Machine if you have OS X version 10.5 (Leopard) or later, but it doesn’t allow for booting your backup should you have a total hard drive failure.)
- Use the appropriate application for your system to setup an automated local backup.
3. Backup your data to a second, offsite location. This guarantees that even in the event of a natural disaster, you’ll still be able to easily recover everything and start all over. I recommend Mozy as the best all around offsite backup solution. It’s also very inexpensive, so no excuses here. It’s incredibly easy to set up for both Mac and Windows.
4. Lastly, if you have a need to keep files synchronized across multiple computers with co-workers and clients, or between home and office, use Dropbox.com as an added level of security and an easy way to transfer large files across the Internet.
Set aside time to do this today, or this month at the very least and get it done and you won’t have to feel guilty, or worried any longer. I can tell you from personal experience that there is nothing quite like the sense of relief and confidence that comes from knowing all my precious data is completely backed up and safe.
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