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September 2005

August 2005

The Importance of Backups - 2011-05-27

Just how important are back-ups? Ask anyone who has lost all their hard work and years of data because they never bothered to figure out back-ups. And why start now? They say it's NEVER too late to implement a backup strategy. Of course, if you wait until tomorrow, and you lose all your data today, then tomorrow IS, in fact, TOO LATE.

Backups are central to any data protection strategy, but by some estimates more than half of all backups fail either in whole or in part. When you look at the reasons for why they are failing, the same issues come up again and again. Media failure, human error and hardware failure are the most common reasons, but the number one reason for back up failure is NOT PERFORMING BACKUPS!

If you don't have a fool proof plan in place for backing up your crucial data, and you don't regularly check that those backups are working, you are risking ALL of your important information, and companies have FAILED due to losing data that could very easily have been backed up. It's part of a disaster recovery plan, and if you don't have one, you are at risk.

Benson & Associates uses Symantech Backup Exec to ensure your data is protected. Our technicians will make sure you have an effective data protection strategy for the day we hope never comes, but given the statistics, probably will.

A little background:

According to internet sources, 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups and 77% of the companies that do have found back-up failures. Hard drive failure rates are also a little frightening: every year, 3 percent of new hard drives fail, and this rate gets higher as the drive gets older. With a three year-old hard drive, the annual failure rate is around six percent. And remember: when a hard drive fails, if the data isn't backed up, it's gone.

If you would like to discuss your current backup plan to ensure it's working properly, or you don't have a disaster recovery plan and need our help to build one, please call the Benson & Associates Helpdesk at 1.877.247.17664.