How to Avoid Problems With Data Recovery

You don't have to anticipate a storm - an outage at your office can occur any time. You may be in the middle of a dangerous weather event, or an accident could have knocked out the power in your area. For whatever reason something has gone wrong at the office, you want to make sure your computer data is easily recoverable. If you plan accordingly, you can prepare for outages and prevent any loss of critical data that you need for your business.

Here are a few things to take into consideration if you are researching a data recovery plan.

1) Schedule regular backups of all computer systems. Whether you have three computers in your office or three hundred, the data stored within is critical to your business. It's good to arrange for regular backups - nightly is usually the rule of thumb if you are fairly active - so you can retrieve data if necessary. An outage may result in no or minimal loss.

2) Investigate options for cloud services. Cloud computing is growing in popularity as people in different parts of the world share files and data. You may not want everything you do on a cloud service, but things like internal communications and files may work in this environment. With the cloud hosted off your data servers, you can refer to it remotely if necessary.

3) Investigate data recovery software. Have your IT department or IT consultant (if you are a small company) look into possible programs to implement in the event of data outage.

4) Copy important data to secondary drives. You may keep USB or portable drives around to do work off-site. If so, consider using one for backup of certain data if you are concerned about protection. Keep the secondary drive in a safe place.

If you do not have an IT department to assist with data recovery, you should consult with a firm that specializes in working with small businesses to maintain connectivity and workflow. Even if you have two people in the office full-time, never take for granted the importance of a data recovery plan. It only takes one moment - a storm, a blip on the power grid - to cause trouble.

IT firms may offer specialized packages for small businesses in need of this kind of protection. Don't wait until a disaster wipes out your hard work before you decide you need a plan.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on Norfolk IT services and Norfolk business Internet services.

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