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All too often, our office computers are disasters waiting to happen. We store huge amounts of important information on them and risk losing it all by neglecting to back up the data. No amount of casualty insurance will recoup the loss of the data on stolen or destroyed computers.
Industry statistics show that fully 10% of hard drives fail in any given year and that 43% of computer users lose one or more files every year in the form of clinical data, financial records, photos, e-mail, documents, and other important information. Recovery of lost data, when it's possible at all, can be very expensive.
Yet a Harris Interactive study last year found that 35% of Americans admitted they never back up their computers. And amazingly, many people who have lost important data in a crash still refuse to do regular backups. Why do so many of us neglect such a basic precaution? Because it's inconvenient and time-consuming. Clearly, the only way to get many people to back up their data regularly is to make the process automatic.
Some computer companies have taken steps in that direction. Apple, for example, has a feature called Time Machine that backs up Macs to an external drive automatically. But that does you no good if, for example, a fire destroys the computers and also incinerates the backup drives.
So, the first rule is to store your backup drives in a different location from your computers. Unfortunately, that's a pain, too, and external drives can be lost or stolen, creating a HIPAA nightmare. So an increasingly popular alternative is automatic remote backup.
Several companies offer this service: two of the most popular are
Mozy and
Carbonite. |
