Are you ready for World Backup Day?

Tomorrow, March 31st, is World Backup Day – a good reminder to ensure all your files and data are backed up and you’re not at risk of losing it all.

What is a backup?

A backup is a copy of your files and data, kept somewhere else, in case the originals are lost or damaged. Backups used to involve creating a copy of files and moving them to another location, but thanks to the cloud, backups can now be done remotely.

Why do you need a backup?

If you’ve read our blog on disaster recovery, you’ll know the importance of planning for the worst. You might not think it will happen to you, but disasters, data loss and viruses are more common than you think.

According to stats collated by World Backup Day, 1 in 10 computers are affected by a virus each month, 20% of hard drives fail within four years, and 45% of businesses say they’ve experienced data loss.

What do you need to backup?

Put simply, everything you can’t afford to lose. How would your business function if you lost all your emails, documents, images, data or your website? Backups ensure that if the worst happens you have a copy elsewhere that you can restore.

How to backup

For all but the smallest businesses, backing up isn’t normally as simple as making a copy and storing it somewhere else. You’ll also need to ensure you are constantly making updated backups and that you have an effective way of restoring the backup, should you need to.

When you’re choosing a backup service, you might want to consider:

• Space limits, how much space will you have available? What happens if you run out?
• Will your service keep previous versions of a file?
• How long will deleted files be backed up?
• How often are your files backed up?
• Will the backup happen automatically?
• Where will your backup be held, is there a second copy of your backup elsewhere?
• What is the process for restoring your backup? Can you do a practice run?

Don’t forget

Test your backups regularly. A backup is only good if you can retrieve data from it!

Help with backups

Not sure what’s right for your business? Contact us to arrange a free back up and disaster recovery review.

Backup now

If you don’t want to wait any longer to start backing up your files, try our fast, secure and reliable backup services. We offer a range of solutions from simple self-managed cloud backups to managed online and on-site backup services. For added peace of mind for our customers PC Comms are proud to be certified partners of Altaro VM Backup software.