Why Backing Up Your Data is a Critical Part of Your Business

Friday, August 07, 2009
Posted in: AcuBase and Trigram Stuff, Practice Management

Throughout the ages, people have set aside, hidden, or otherwise protected their most valuable assets ‘just in case.’  Whether it’s in a safe, under the mattress, or in a bank safe deposit box, knowing that you have your most valuable stuff in the safest place possible can give one peace of mind and save a lot of hassle if the unthinkable were to happen.

In this day and age of computer-based everything, when bank accounts, credit cards, and mission-critical software keeps your life running smoothly, it only make sense that you would want to safeguard your data the way you would insurance documents or the family jewelry.  Yet, we here at Trigram are often shocked at how infrequently users keep off-site backups of their practice information, their practice management databases and other patient-related documents. 

Consider the following conservative, dated statistics:

• 6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year. Given the number of PCs used in US businesses in 1998, that translates to approximately 4.6 million data loss episodes. At a conservative estimate, data loss cost US businesses $11.8 billion in 1998. (The Cost Of Lost Data, David M. Smith)
• 30% of all businesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year. 70% fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
• 31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control.
• 34% of companies fail to test their tape backups, and of those that do, 77% have found tape back-up failures.
• 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.
• 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
• American business lost more than $7.6 billion as a result of viruses during first six months of 1999. (Research by Computer Economics)
• Companies that aren’t able to resume operations within ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic Research Institute)
• Simple drive recovery can cost upwards of $7,500 and success is not guaranteed.

Given these statistics, and our own experiences with our users’ data loss, we not only recommend you back up all of your data on a regular basis, we make it easy and redundant with AcuBase.  If you close the program at the end of each day, you will be asked if you’d like to back up the database.  We highly recommend that you do so.  If you do not wish to close the program, simply go to Settings/Preferences, General, and click on the Backup button.  Either way, AcuBase will back up the critical files you need to the AcuBase Backup directory (within the AcuBase directory, look for the “Backup” folder). 

While doing the above backup procedure within AcuBase is great, that’s only part of the picture.  Next, you will need an off-site backup.  This means, with AcuBase closed, you back up the Backup directory/folder onto a drive that you can take off-site, away from the computer.  We recommend you do this every day, onto an external USB-based “flash” drive or any other portable drive that’s easy to take home or away from your primary computer.  Keep at least a week of separate backups on the drive (one for each day of the week), and perhaps one backup representing the last day of each month.  This way, if data is lost, you have backups at different points in time. 

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->The Support / KnowledgeBase section of the Trigram.com website has entries for how to back up on both a Mac or a PC, single- or network-user versions.  For Mac people, check out this link.  PC users, this one.  And if you have any questions, of course you contact us directly.  <!--[endif]-->

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