Losing important data can devastate a small business. According to a recent survey of business executives disaster recovery was the primary reason that company's chose to use a data storage service. In the recent NAS vendor Avere Systems and Gatepoint Research Report 63% of the 100 business executive respondents said that disaster recovery was the primary motivation behind their companies using a data storage service.
While protecting your data from an unforeseen disaster is certainly a very good reason to set up a data storage solution it is not the only one. Below you can find some of the major advantages of using a data storage solution to protect and store your data. Bear in mind that even if your company diligently backs up it's data, it remains important to plan for the worst and make sure that you have an approved local data recovery vendor in place. This will ultimately save your company time and money should the worst happen. If your business is located in London, then Easy Recovery offer a great range of services.
Preventing prolonged downtime
Prolonged downtime is a disaster that many businesses will never recover from. This downtime is often caused by the loss of key data. The reason for data loss doesn't have to be due to natural disaster such as an earthquake, fire or flood. Human error is a common cause of the loss of data due to mistakes or failure to save key files.
Critical if you are audited
Regulatory and tax agencies will want to see a complete set of your financial records. Failure to present these can mean that you are not compliant and can result in significant fines. Loss of data due to oversight, lack of systems in place, or disaster will not be accepted as a reason to fail to produce accurate records.
Avoiding work needing to be repeated
having to repeat work is a massive waste of company resources. If work is not properly stored and cannot be easily retrieved then the work will frequently need to be done over once again. This may involve having to recreate spreadsheets, presentations of re-invoicing customers.
It can be automated
If you choose to use an online backup service or NAS device you won't have to worry about manually backing up your files. These data services work in the background and automatically update your data. Some data services will back up your data according to a schedule that you have set, where as other backup services will be constantly backing up your data whatever changes are made.
Types of backup solution
There are a number of different types of backup solutions that you can use to back up your small business company data. Some of these include:
Flash drives
These are small devices which are inserted into a USB port. Flash drives can hold anywhere up to around 64 GB of data for and are great for selective backup. Because flash drives are small and easy to carry they are great for backing up important documents.
CD and DVD's
CD and DVD are able to hold less data than a flash drive, but they do tend to be much cheaper than flash based memory and can also be used to store data on an permentant basis. Backing up data onto compact disks can take longer to complete than a flash drive backup, but they also offer the opportunity to keep data neatly organised since disks can be stored in chronologic order on cake spindles.
External hard drives
External hard drives are perhaps the most practical backup solution available for small businesses. External drives can often hold up to six terabytes of data, there are relatively easy to use, and they make organising your information easy. Many external drives also come with free automatic backup software, and some even use RAID to backup your data to multiple drives at once (mirroring).
NAS devices
A NAS device is similar to an external hard drive but with a few additional features. They attach to a small businesses network and can be accessed by all of the networked computers at the same time. This allows the businesses employees to back up and access their stored information simultaneously without having to attach an external drive to each of the computers.
Online Back up Service
This type of service provides access to remote data storage servers which can be accessed by a business over the Internet. Either through a browser interface, or more commonly through a program which automatically backs up any files that are added to a pre-specified list of folders. Data is updated either when a file changes, or on a daily basis according to a set schedule. Data can be accessed from any location and can be recovered using any device. Online data storage offers one of the most flexible solutions for backing up company data though it can be expensive.
In conclusion
Safely storing your data is critical for your small business. Without easy access to your company's data your business operations could potentially grind to a halt. No matter what your data storage needs, there is likely to be a data solution to match.
About Author:
By Nick Davison
Advanced Data Recovery are London's leading data recovery experts. For more information on corporate data security and RAID recovery, check out our blog.
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