Backups

Imagine going into the office tomorrow and discovering that all your electronic files are gone.  ALL of them – financial, contributions, minutes to meetings, sermon studies and notes.  Years of work vanished.   Last week it happened again.  I got a call from a client inquiring if I had a copy of some critical files.  I did not.   The computer that housed these files had crashed (although it was only a year old).  I asked the obvious question – “do you have a backup?”.  He did not.  It will take months of work to recreate the missing data.

Imagine going into the office tomorrow and discovering that all your electronic files are gone.“

Always keep a backup of computer files that is stored off site.  Keeping the backup on a thumb drive that is kept in the office is certainly better than nothing (it would have helped in this situation), but if a disaster such as a fire occurs, the computer and the backup are both lost – so a process that keeps a backup off-site or on-line is a must.

There are also options that will automatically backup your computer files on-line (which also allows you to have access to them from anywhere).  Backblaze, SugarSync, IDrive, Drop Box and Carbonite are a few options.

I got another call a few days later.  The client took the computer to an expert who was able to restore some of the files from the computer.  He was fortunate, but the additional time, cost and stress involved in restoring the files could have been avoided.