Most people that start a small business do it for many reasons. One of those reasons is the freedom they hope it will give them. However the reality is they find themselves with a lot less time on their hands in comparison when they worked for an employer.
The other aspect that many forget is when previously on their home computers the data they stored was important but not essential to their job. Now starting a small business many owners either forget to back up their data or see their computer data as a low priority. This is normally the case until they actually lose it.
So we know computers are important to our small business but they can be replaced it’s the data that is the essential requirement for the company’s survival and something that is not easily replaced or restored unless you have a good backup plan. Although you can backup locally this will not protect your data against a true disaster like theft or fire. That is why an online back up using your internet connection is not only a convenient option as it often just works in the back ground but also takes your data off site.
Understand your Small Business Data
To be able to back up such data the first thing you need to do is understand what data is important to the company and then where it is stored. This sounds easy most people will say I need to back up everything and it’s all stored on my computer. For the majority of us this is not true.
Probably one of the most important pieces of data to any business as it is not only a list of contacts but also a history of communications with customers and other companies. How can you prove you had an agreement without that email. Also if you have used email over a long period some systems (Microsoft Outlook) archive old emails into a separate file. So often business’s emails are not backed up. If you use outlook then the chances are you will have outlook open while you are trying to backup. Ensure the online backup software you use backs up your email files usually .pst or .ost files if using outlook. These can become very large so the slight change may take a long while to actually backup. A better option can be using a web mail application like Gmail and duplicate your emails online and locally. At least then you will have them in two locations. Just be aware this will not store the other data in your mail client like contact and appointments.
Database
Any database of important information should be backed up and that will depend on the database software you use. Some run a scheduled process where they extract the data into a separate file that can be backed up. This will get over the problem of backing up a database that is constantly being used.
Documents
Probably what most people think about when you talk about your files however so often people save them in different locations and forget to back a location up. This commonly happens to people saving documents onto their desktop and then they only backup documents folder. All too often this is only realised once they have either lost a document or want to go back to a previous version. One cheap and free option to back up your data is to use dropbox. This gives you 2GB (gigabytes) worth of data however you have to ensure you save everything into the dropbox folder. The great thing about dropbox is you can put it on more than one computer and the files are synchronised across all machines.
Whatever online backup service you use there are some issues you should consider before choosing one. You can see my article on the pros and cons of using an online data backup service.