Preventing Data Loss
We recover data for a living, and almost every job we see could have been avoided. These are the measures that would have done it.
Where data loss really comes from
- Drives and SSDs wearing out
- Files deleted or overwritten by mistake
- Laptops lost or stolen
- Ransomware and other malware
- Fire, water and power surges
- A member of staff leaving, with the only copy on their laptop
What we put in place
- The 3-2-1 rule: three copies, on two kinds of storage, one of them off site
- Version history, so yesterday’s file can be brought back after today’s mistake
- Test restores: a backup nobody has restored from is a hope, not a backup
- Drive health monitoring: drives usually warn before they fail, if anything is listening
- Disk encryption on laptops (BitLocker or FileVault), so a stolen laptop is a lost laptop and not a data breach
- Battery backup and surge protection for servers and NAS units
- Shared storage for shared work, so company files do not live on one person’s computer
- An offboarding checklist: accounts closed and data handed over on the day
Three things that are not backups
- RAID. It survives one failed drive. It copies a deletion or an encryption to every drive at once.
- Cloud sync. Delete a file on one computer and it is deleted everywhere.
- A USB drive that is always plugged in. Ransomware encrypts it with everything else.
If it is already too late
See data recovery. Stop using the device first.
Questions
How often should we back up?
At least nightly for most offices, with working files copied through the day.
How do we know our backups work?
By restoring from them on a schedule. We do that for clients on a managed plan.
Is the cloud a backup?
A cloud backup service is. Cloud file sync is not.
Book a visit or a pickup
Call us or book online and tell us the make, the model and what is going wrong. For IT support a technician comes to your home or office. For a repair we pick the computer up from your door, fix it at our own workshop in Burbank and bring it back. We have no storefront, so there is nowhere to drop a machine off. Outside our area, you can mail it to us.