Small Business IT mistake 10: No disaster recovery

I've left disaster recovery for last because it frightens and depresses me. Almost every business I see has some flaw in how they protect their business data.

Most businesses don't understand that computer hardware is cheap and easy to replace; it's the data stored on the system that is valuable. For most businesses, losing all their data would be the end of the enterprise.

Backing up data is the most fundamental part of a disaster recovery plan. But that’s not the whole picture with disaster recovery.

The aim of a disaster recovery plan is to get your computer systems back on line as quickly as possible should a disaster strike. That disaster could be a fire, a break in, a flood or even the building collapsing.

So it's more than just the data; you need something to save the data onto, you need somewhere to store the data, you need something to read the data. You need to be able to access everything quickly should the worst happen.

It's probably a good idea to keep at least part of that locked cabinet full of software and folders we discussed earlier at home rather than the office.

Until the rise of cheap external hard drives, most business data backups were done onto tape. Tapes were comparatively cheap, stored a lot of data and were portable.

The only problem was they failed as often as not, the mental scars of my own encounters with this are why this subject fills with me with dread.

The disaster recovery plan has to include rotating the backups. If you rely on one drive or tape, your whole system will fail if that drive or tape fails. Ideally you'd have twenty of the things working on daily weekly and monthly schedules that mean your data is saved for a year at a time.

Most businesses though balk at this cost and that's understandable. A compromise is often two or three backup devices where one is plugged into the computer while the others are taken home by the boss or the secretary.

This means you'll lose a weeks work should the building burn down. For most small businesses this is a reasonable trade off between costs. For some though, the cost of re-creating a week's work is prohibitive so the cost of a few more $200 external drives is worthwhile.

Disaster recovery is an absolutely key area for small business IT. The smaller your business is, the more your data and intellectual property is important to you.

It's critical you discuss a disaster recovery plan with your IT consultant and make sure you have a working one in place.