If I had a nickel for every time I heard a client say “why isn’t my backup working? – I didn’t do anything to my PC”  … well, I’d have a lot of nickels!

Did you know that on a regular basis, Microsoft Windows (the control program for your computer) automatically accesses the Internet and downloads updates? Updates repair software bugs, fix security vulnerabilities and often introduce new features or capabilities to your operating system.

These updates can – and sometimes do – make fundamental changes to the way your computer operates.

It is not uncommon for an update from Microsoft – or another application vendor – to “break” an online backup application. What’s worse is that since backups occur quietly in the background, you may not even know that things have gone awry!

Software updates are a fact of life. After any update,  you’ll want to routinely test your online backup (and other) applications to be sure they are properly operating.

A software update will frequently trigger the need for a backup application software update. An update of one application, could of course cause the need for another application update.

Ay-yi-yi. Aren’t computer wonderful? Thank goodness for backups

NextUp: Antivirus software – Is it perfect?

While many vendors offer products which claim to automatically create nightly online backups, we feel very adamant that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SET-IT-AND-FORGET-IT ONLINE BACKUP APPLICATION.

If your business depends on an online backup service for disaster protection – and isn’t that why you have it – your backups MUST be regularly monitored.

Professionally managed online backup services (like Dr.Backup) have trained technicians that regularly review your backups and ensure that they are properly operating. This greatly increases the likelihood you’ll be able to recover valuable information should a data mishap occur.

Over the next few days, I’ll be discussing some of the reasons any online backup system could fail to deliver as promised…and what can be done to make sure it doesn’t happen to you!

Next Up: Windows Update – Is it always your friend?

Congratulations to Perry Friz of TriCounty Mechnical in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. On Friday, May 13th, at 10:07 pm, TriCounty’s server successfully completed Dr.Backup‘s 3 millionth online backup job.

Our thanks go out to Perry and his technology consultant Don Christman of Computer Troubleshooters. To mark this milestone, both Perry and Don will receive a VISA Gift Card as a token of our appreciation.

Founded in 2001, Dr.Backup is a privately held, owner-operated company headquartered in Laurel, Maryland – just a few miles from our nation’s capital, Washington, DC.

We specialize in providing online backup service to small-mid sized businesses, helping them safeguard their most critical computer data.

Our clients and resellers enjoy some of the highest levels of customer support in the industry. We take our service motto, “We’ve Got Your Back” very seriously, and stand behind our offerings with one of the industry’s only 100% Customer Satisfaction guarantees.

Since 2001, Dr.Backup has been protecting the critical data files of businesses in the US, Canada and select international locations. We are proud to announce that sometime today, on lucky Friday the 13th, we will successfully complete our 3 millionth customer backup job.

We track completed backup jobs on our website with a dynamic graphic that updates about every 15 minutes. At 4:23pm eastern time, the graphic to the left showed the inevitable progress towards the milestone event.

The lucky 3,000,000th client will win a VISA gift card and get an honorable mention here on our blog.  More news next week on the winning company…and of course the start of our countdown to 4,000,000!

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in June 2009 a typical worker earned $18.41 per hour (average across all non-farm industries EXCLUDING benefits.)

If we assume it takes about 15 minutes per day for a staff person to run and verify that an inhouse backup successfully completed, the “hidden” labor cost to perform this critical function can be calculated as:

1/4  hour  x  $18.41/hour  x  22 business days/month = $101.25 per month

This number does not include the cost of additional equipment or media – nor the time/cost associated with moving these backups offsite on a regular basis. Other costs such as worker training and periodic testing of backup reliability are also not factored into the equation.

Now suppose this company made a slight change and used Dr.Backup to perform daily backups (using Standard 10GB Package Plan) while continuing to perform a full in-house backup once a week. The costs might look something like this:

1/4 hour x $18.41/hour x 4  per month + $31.95 for Dr.Backup = $50.36 per month

Using this approach the company saves 50% on labor associated with performing backups. In addition, daily backups are now fully automated and professionally managed. Even if the responsible employee is sick or goes on vacation – the online backups continue to occur.

Given the importance of computer data to most businesses, perhaps this simple dollars and “sense” explanation will help a small business owner to save money and better protect their livelyhood.

If you know a business that uses RAID (see below) as their only method of avoiding data loss protection, you definitely need to help them better understand the risk they are taking.

Not only is RAID not enough – it doesn’t even protect against the most common data loss threats!

The table below makes a strong case that RAID should be combined with some other protection strategy in order to reliably secure client data.

Data Loss Threats    RAID 1/5   Local-Backup   Online-Backup

Hardware Failure      YES           YES            YES
Software Bug           NO           YES            YES
File System Corruption NO           YES            YES
Accidental Deletion    NO           YES            YES
Virus Infection        NO           YES            YES
Equipment Theft        NO            NO            YES
Employee Sabotage      NO            NO            YES
Natural Disaster       NO            NO            YES
Human Error            NO           YES            YES
Power Surge/Lightning  NO            NO            YES

Score                 10%           60%           100%

The combination of RAID, local backup and online backup (of mission critical data files) can provide excellent data safety.  the good news is that most educated businesses will make the right choice when it comes to a data backup strategy…they just need to be educated

Note:  RAID is the use of Redundant Array of Independent Disks technology to protect against disruptive hardware failures such as a single failed disk drive.

What happens when a critical computer file/folder is deleted…and the missing data is not discovered for several months?  This recently happened to a Dr.Backup client.

The bookkeeper of a small shipping company had been systematically embezzling funds from the company she worked at for almost 2 years. When the boss began suspecting foul play, the bookkeeper quit – but not before covering her tracks by deleting certain critical records from the accounting computer.

Months later, professional auditors tried to untangle the financial mess the shipping company found itself facing. When they began looking for certain financial records, the records were of course missing. Local backup tapes were searched, but most had been recycled many times over. Other tapes could just not be read or were missing.

The records were gone – or were they?

Fortunately, the local IT consultant had bundled Dr.Backup online backup service into the company’s monthly maintenance package. Unknown to the bookkeeper, critical files were being automatically backed up each night from the accounting system share – files she thought she had deleted.

The “keep latest version” feature – unique to the Dr.Backup client software – helped ensure that even though important files were deleted from the accounting system months ago, these files were not lost.

After a quick call to support, the files were restored from the online backup archive and provided to the auditors. Criminal and civil actions are now pending against the ex-bookkeeper!

Is your client’s data protected against this type of fraud? Ask your backup company if they maintain a copy of files that were deleted months ago!