Backup, Sync, or Access

To help you jump start the new year, we’re posting thirty-one technology and business treats, one for each day of January.

If there’s one thing we need to remember about technology is that it is constantly changing. Most of us evolve with each change. However, often times our behaviors and understanding do not change. We evolve in our everyday use of technology, usually because our technology devices or applications force us to with upgrades and updates. What may not evolve when we upgrade are our operational processes. There is nothing worse than finding out after the fact that your new technology does not work with something you’re still using or doesn’t work when you’re trying to get something back.

This week we’re going to focus on terminology. By understanding what these common terms mean – backup, restore, sync, and access – we can then better evaluate what we need for what we’re trying to do. We’ll also understand the possibilities and limitations of each, very important factors in our decisions.

Today we’re going to focus on backup.

We’ve all heard we need to backup. The general understanding of backing up is that your data will be there should a catastrophe or disaster occur, like your office burns down or your hard drive crashes. Now with the cloud, people even understand the need to backup offsite, like to the cloud, as well as to something external, like another device that’s not their computer hard drive.

Now that you’re backing up to all of these places, have you ever tried restoring your data? Have you run a what if scenario to make sure it all works?

A backup is only effective if you can later restore your data. And to restore your data, you must have the same application (i.e., software program) and same operating system (that can run that software program). For example, you’re using Quickbooks 2000 on your computer which runs Windows XP. You’ve been faithfully backing up all of your FinancialSoftware data on an external hard drive. Your computer hard drive crashes for good and you think no problem, I’ve got a backup!

You’re so excited because you’re finally getting a new computer! You get it all set up and are now ready to get your data that you’ve been so faithfully backing up on your new computer. You’re already anticipating how much faster everything is going to work. What a blessing that old hard drive finally gave out! Here we go … only to find out your new computer runs Windows 7 and your FinancialSoftware 2000 only runs on Windows XP which is no longer available.

Not only does your FinancialSoftware 2000 not run on your new Windows 7 computer, FinancialSoftware has a sunset policy. That means that FinancialSoftware 2012 will not be able to import your backed up data! You find out you cannot restore your FinancialSoftware backup at all.

Backup is only a minor part of the equation. What’s really at stake is the ability to restore that backed up data. What’s needed and necessary to restore backed up data is often times neglected. Time to check up on your backup AND what it would take to restore that backed up data.