Your Data and Your Business

This isn't about selling computers. This isn't about selling software. This isn't about selling services. Whether we sell you those things before or after disaster strikes doesn't affect our business -- but it will affect yours. Disaster recovery is more profitable for us than prevention; but we could do without the related stress, and so could you.

We Care

We have prepared this guide because we care about our customers and their businesses. We feel awful when we must inform customers that their valuable data is gone forever. Every week we are called upon to fix computers that contain data crucial to a business. All too often data and program files are damaged. All too often the customer doesn't have a complete backup, or any backup. All too often the customer can't find the original disks and documentation for the programs that his business depends upon.

If You Think Prevention Is Costly...

Even in the unlikely case that none of the above paragraph applies to you, you still face numerous preventable hazards. The costly downtime incurred while a computer is repaired, and data and applications are restored, can make the expense of prevention trivial by comparison. After a disaster, many of our customers are ready to explore preventive measures to reduce the possibility of costly downtime in the future. Unfortunately they have just lost so much money on the current disaster that they can't afford it. We'll see them again when the next disaster strikes. Invariably, the money "saved" by not taking preventive measures is more than wiped-out by a single problem.

A Common Occurrence

Suppose you arrive at the office tomorrow morning and your computer isn't working. What would you do? Even if you have been making daily backups, chances are that you still would not be able to restore your network or stand-alone computer to operation. You may also be quite surprised to learn that the data that you thought you backed up isn't really there -- we have seen it happen!

What Is Your Data Worth?

If your business is like most, its data is priceless. Without it, your company is literally out of business. In most cases, it cannot be replaced at any cost.  If you want to try to put a value on your data, you can start by calculating the labor cost of obtaining the data and entering it into your computer system. Then try to assign a value to the data itself. Please add it up, and write it down here:   $____________________________________________________

Now consider that your data investment can be wiped-out by the failure of a disk drive costing a few hundred dollars, a power supply worth less than a hundred dollars, or a computer virus that you get for free.

We Prefer to Prevent Disasters

Actually, fixing disasters is quite profitable for us. Still, we are not fond of making money from other people's misfortunes. Besides, it is less stressful to prevent disasters than to have to clean-up after them. Finally, a customer that goes out of business won't be buying from us in the future. But enough about our needs, let's get on to how we can minimize your risks from all-too-common, and very costly data loss and downtime.

Installation Is Not Better the Second Time Around

Although applications can usually be replaced, it can be time consuming to get the replacements. Once you do, you have to spend time reinstalling them. Do you remember all of the options that you selected during and after installation for each application that you use?

Hard Disk Drive Failure:
"If It Moves, It Breaks"

It's not a matter of whether your hard drive will fail, it's a matter of when. Moving parts wear out. Repair of your drive is usually impractical. A warranty "repair" is generally a replacement drive; it won't have your data on it! Yes, there are some companies that may recover some of your data from a totally dead drive, but the only thing that they guarantee is a very large bill for making the effort.

Always Assume That Your Hard Disk Won't Work Tomorrow

It is as certain as death and taxes. Remember that a Hard Disk Drive is a sealed box of stacked disks with rust on them. Several heads move back and forth over the spinning disks, magnetizing microscopic portions of the rusty surfaces. The heads also "read" the magnetized areas that have been "written." After a while, the disks stop spinning, the heads stop moving, or some other nasty thing goes wrong.

Back It Up!

If you can't afford to lose a day's work, back up every day. You don't have to do a complete backup every day, but you must do a complete backup periodically. You should also do complete backups prior to installing new software. Do another complete backup soon after installing new software, but don't discard the older backups! Backing up will be discussed some more later in this report.

Mirror (Duplex) It

It makes a great deal of sense to mirror the server' hard disk drives; especially since even large drives are now relatively inexpensive. Mirroring means that the computer duplicates the contents of each of your disk drives onto a companion drive, on a continuous basis. In the event that one drive fails, the other still contains all of your data and programs. Due to the small additional cost, we recommend that the drives be duplexed rather than mirrored. The difference is that the drives are attached to separate controller cards. Duplexing further improves reliability, and server performance, with only a slight increase in cost. Furthermore, the server will keep working even if one drive fails.

Mirrored Servers

Finally, if you absolutely can't afford to be without your server for a day, mirrored servers can address your needs. That may sound expensive, but for some companies, one day without the server can cost far more than mirroring the server. What it would cost my company to lose a server for a day: $___________________________________________

How D A S Can Help

Recovery of data from failing drives.
Disk Duplexing and mirroring within Servers.
Server mirroring.
Backup your data over the internet to our remote servers.
Assistance in choosing data protection devices.
Development of data protection strategies.