Did you know that data loss is one of the leading reasons why small and medium businesses go bankrupt? Here are some of the types of information stored locally on computers and servers:
- Client contact information
- Business receipts
- Calendar schedules
- Financial Records
- Client Communication
If you lose your hard drives in a power surge or other disaster, you lose all of that information. Your business can grind to a halt overnight, and it may not be possible to recover. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that up to 90 percent of small businesses that lose data go bankrupt within 5 years. Even low estimates pin the failure rate at 60 to 70 percent.
With that said, it might be possible to recover some or all of the lost data depending on what shape your hard drives are in. However, the process isn’t quick or cheap. Companies typically spend at least $1,000 per megabyte to recover data, so a single gigabyte costs far more than most businesses can afford.
Data Protection Solutions
You could lose 15 years of accumulated data overnight if your hard drives crash, but you can protect your data for a small monthly fee. If your hard drives crash, you can restore all of your files within a few hours, and your business will be running like usual by tomorrow.
Automated Backups
Data backups will prove invaluable if your computers go down, but you have to actually create data backups first. It won’t help if you occasionally remember to create backups once or twice a year.
Sign up for an automatic server backup service that will upload your data to the cloud at least once every week. By scheduling backups, you’ll take uncertainty and human error out of the equation.
Image Backups
If your operating system crashes and you need to re-install an image backup will allow you to restore all of your settings and files as if nothing happened. Image backups are more expensive than backing up certain files or folders, but they’ll allow your business to resume normal operations the fastest out of any backup method.
Restoration Testing
When you choose a server backup service, you don’t want something to happen to your backup. Restoration testing is a redundancy that helps ensure your backups will work flawlessly when you need them.
Restoration testing services check for program compatibility and file corruption. If anything is wrong, you can create another backup to further protect your data. Many companies take steps to protect their data only to find out that their backups are corrupted, but monthly testing could have saved them a major headache.
If you outsource your IT needs, ScaleIT provides a variety of data backup services at competitive rates. Contact us today for a free consultation. We’ll identify your business’s particular needs and suggest a data backup solution to fit your budget.
