June 2004 

The more we become dependent upon our computers, the more devastating it can be when they aren’t working properly. While rebuilding a system is never a pleasant task, doing it without the proper backup materials can cost you your job or your business! You can lose weeks, months, and even years of work if your disk crashes, you get attacked by a virus, or even if you shutdown or are brought down ungracefully!

Nobody is safe from natural disasters like fires, floods, hurricanes or even just extreme temperatures. You must retain a copy of all your backups off-site and make sure that current data backups are rotated to a safe remote location.

Boot Disks — Boot disks are often overlooked and easily misplaced. They allow you to reinstall your operating system from a diskette or CD on newer systems. If you are running Unix you need to update this every time you make significant system changes because your configuration is stored on the diskette. It could take days to reconfigure your serial lines if you don’t have a current airbag boot diskette.

Operating System — You also need to maintain your operating system diskettes or CDs. You should also keep service pack updates so you can bring your system back to the most current revision.

Application Software — Once you recover the basic system you would need to reload all the software you are using. It is important to organize the software you have loaded, and keep good documentation of what is loaded on each machine and how it is configured. Don’t forget to backup software that is downloaded directly to your computer so you don’t lose the software if your disk fails. You should also keep good documentation of your licenses and product license keys.

Data Files — Keeping a current backup of your data files is the most important backup to make because your data can not be reloaded or rebuilt without many hours of arduous data entry!

You should establish a storage rotation program to assure you can recover even if a tape is bad, or you need to go back more than a single day.

You should keep at least one week of daily backups, a month’s worth of weekly backups (5 weeks for the 4-5-4 calendar), three months worth of monthly backups, and 3 years worth of year-end backups.

Your weekly backup, if not daily, should be rotated to an off-site location.

Maintaining a rigorous backup policy is an important part of your daily procedures and should be assigned to a trusted and responsible member of your team.