by Ero Gray-This is one post in a continuing series aimed at nonprofit organizations with limited access to IT staff. The advice and opinions here will tend to be most useful to small and startup nonprofits, which often need to make IT decisions and accomplish IT tasks despite not having qualified folks to help. It should be assumed that all suggestions here are my attempt to recommend the simplest/easiest/most effective options for most offices. Your office may be quite different (or it may not even be an office). Also, as I'll frequently note, IT staff are necessary for any organization to function for long.
When it comes to computers, we're all painfully aware that bad things happen. These are complicated machines, and they break. Also, as I'm frequently told by users, gremlins crawl in and eat documents when you least expect it.
The list of bad things that can happen, includes, among countless other horrible possibilities,
- Accidentally saving over an important document
- Accidentally deleting an important file
- Virus or malware makes computer impossible to use
- Files magically become corrupt and won't open
- Hard drive crash destroys all data on computer
- Power supply failure makes computer impossible to use
- Power surge or electrical spike destroys computer
I'll stop there. There are other possibilities but you get the idea.
It's a truism that, in the computer world, nothing exists unless there are two or more copies of it. But, managing multiple copies of everything you do can be a serious headache. So what's to be done? Backups, in multiple places and forms. Once you start being paranoid about data (and when dealing with computers, being paranoid about data is just common sense, because things break, badly, when you least expect them to), you can go as deep as you like. We'll start in the shallow end and wade deeper. If you start feeling underwater, please at least consider implementing the suggestions in the first few paragraphs. Even simple backups can really save a lot of grief.
If you only have a folder or two of office files (Word docs, spreadsheets, etc) to worry about, then you ought to, right now, today, go purchase two flash (aka thumb, aka USB) drives, at Staples or wherever's handy. Don't pay more than $20 for a 4GB model. (These are constantly coming down in price- this time next year you may be able to get a 16GB model for $20.) Pop one of the flash drives into your computer's USB slot; browse to your new hard drive, make a folder called 'Backups xx-xx-xxxx' (where xx-xx-xxxx is today's date) and copy everything important into it. Do this once a week, alternating which thumb drive you use. Take the alternate flash drive home in the meantime, or keep one on your keychain or in your purse or briefcase. When the 4GB fills up, delete the oldest folder on the flash drive before replacing with a new copy. This process gives you several weeks of snapshots of your files, and one is always in an offsite location, so that if your office burns down you have last week's copy of your data at home. One danger of this approach is that if you lose the flash drive, and someone picks it up, they have all your data. So don't lose it! And/or, buy one of the ones that's got encryption built in (don't forget your password).
If you've got too much data for this (which can easily happen if you work with video, or have lots and lots and lots and lots of pictures), you may want to upgrade this process to full-size hard drives-- external ones, connected by USB. These are usually about the size of a book physically but have enormous amounts of storage inside. You can currently buy hundreds of gigabytes for under $100. (Today, for instance, I saw a reputable-brand 320GB drive on sale for $50). These are more fragile than thumb drives and much less portable, but you can still put one in a backpack, briefcase or purse. This means you can have a backup at home on the weekend in case your office burns down.
While you're getting into the flash drive and/or external hard drive routine, you'll also want to look into online backup services. These use your internet connection to upload files to a separate location. A good roundup of the most-recommended products can be read here. Here at CRE we're big fans of Mozy and Dropbox, but there are a number of good options. For small amounts of data, the free versions may work (with Mozy, the free version has a 2GB limit, which, if you're a mathematician, you'll note, is less space than the thumb drives recommended above), but even the expensive versions are quite cheap for the peace of mind they offer. Just make sure you know how the system works and make sure they continue to work; backups, like antivirus software, can cease to be useful if you let them stop functioning. I heartily advise everyone to set up one of these solutions, at home and at work, immediately.
For local (i.e. not off-site) backups, Windows has a pretty respectable program built in. You can find out how to use it here. Alternately, lots of folks prefer to use Cobian Backup, which is free, reliable and very easy to use. In either instance you need to make sure you have storage space enough for all the files you're backing up, and you should put some thought into where that storage space is. Combining Cobian with external USB hard drives, for instance, can be very smart. (Current versions of Mozy also back up to local hard drives, which is handy.)
For a whole office worth of files, you may wish to create a central location to back up to and/or to back up from. This can be an external hard drive, shared over your network, or even a NAS (network-attached storage) drive such as the Buffalo Linkstation or WD ShareSpace. This is a device that can plug into a router and be accessed by any computer on the network. Now, this is onsite storage, so you won't want to depend on it alone (keeping in mind the possibility of not being able to reach your office, or something happening to the office itself); but sometimes just having an extra copy of a file when you need it can save a lot of anguish. These devices range from a couple hundred dollars to over a thousand dollars, depending on the amount of storage space you need. You can also set up off-site backups to work from your central backup storage, using Mozy or another service from a central backup storage. This provides an extra layer of safety.
Keep in mind that storage space tends to vanish rapidly; you'll want to do some math that involves the current amount of space your files use, how often they'll be backed up, how long you want to keep backups, and how much you expect your files to grow. For instance, if I'm backing up 2 GB of files once a week, and keeping 2 months' worth of copies, then that's using up 16GB. (Most backups operate with incremental-backups options, that allow you to only backup changes to files; but I find that there's a lot of potential for mayhem and confusion here, and tend to prefer multiple complete copies instead).
Now, we've only scratches the surface: databases and other complex systems will typically need to have separate backup routines, as will email if you're keeping it on your computer (as opposed to 'in the cloud'), and then there's still the question of how to restore your computers to an operable condition if something terrible happens. IT folks like to use programs like Paragon and Symantec Ghost to make 'image' discs, that can be used to restore your computer's operating system to a point in time. These are pretty expensive programs and not particularly user-friendly. There are a few free options (Macrium Reflect, CloneZilla, et al) but either way you may want an IT person to do the job once each year. (Or if you're feeling adventurous you can try the steps yourself.) Having an image disc ready to go at a moment's notice can make recovery from an otherwise crippling issue much less painful.
There are many other elements to disaster and continuity planning, many of which are not IT-related at all; staff emergency phone trees and pre-arranged meeting places, among others. These are out of our scope here, but if I can convince a few of my readers to make a backup of something important, I'll have done my job for the week.
Next week: IT Without IT, Part 9: Databases
Links to previous posts in this series:
IT Without IT, Part 1: Introduction
IT Without IT, Part 2: Choosing and Acquiring Computers
IT Without IT, Part 3: Operating Systems and Office Software
IT Without IT, Part 4: Antivirus Software
IT Without IT, Part 5: Simple Networking
IT Without IT, Part 6: Email and Websites
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