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As an I.T. professional, you would know of the virtues of backing up
important data. We've all heard tragic tales of someone's PC being wiped
clean by a virus and there's no back up and it takes them months to
recover some of the loss.
I was reading an airline magazine at 30,000 feet
recently, and there was a sad letter to the editor from a guy who had left his
iPOD on a plane complete with a huge catalogue of his favourite music that had
taken him months to compile and edit. He didn't get it back and he
was wishing its new owner much joy with his selection of music. That was
kind of him considering that he had to start from scratch to recreate all that
he had lost.
I'm sure you're all diligently backing up not only your
PC but your digital photos and music, your contact lists, your passwords and
every bit of precious data that you have stored IN ONE PLACE. Are you also
creating a copy that is stored in a different location to its source? That
source location may get destroyed and having a back up copy in the same place
will be no help at all. How about having several generations of back ups
in case the back up media is corrupted for some reason?
The effort you go to will depend on how precious that
data is to you. When we at CRS were preparing for Y2K, we considered how
the business would carry on in the event of no electricity, water, telephones or
gasoline for an extended period of time. That meant manual print outs of
our entire database, copies of which were kept at different locations.
That may sound extreme, but consider how Grenada ground to a halt for several
weeks and months after Hurricane Ivan wiped them out last year. Would your
business survive that?
Happy copying! Oh, and if you are living in the
Caribbean, it might be advisable to stock up on batteries, water, food, etc., as
the hurricane season has started with a vengeance! Also, maybe you should just
check that your insurance premiums are up to date.
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