Saturday, September 25, 2010

Testing 1, 2, 3 TESTING

Plugging in...

The Tutor has blogged many times about the importance of having a backup plan in place for one's computer. But as one of the Tutor's clients recently found out, doing a backup isn't enough.

TESTING the backup is as important as doing the backup. A client's hard drive went to that big, electronic resting place in the sky. Though a backup hadn't been done recently, there was one from several months ago. Better than nothing, right? WRONG, wrong, wrong.

The backup did NOT contain the information that the client thought it was backing up. Somewhere between hither and yon, the backup choices had been inadvertently changed. No one knows nor remembers doing such a thing, but it happened. Oh, the backup device contained information, just not the information for their personal or business finances, nor any of their documents.

A backup plan should be similar to the following:

back up on a regular schedule
monthly, take a look at the backup to see what it contains
take a file OFF the backup and place it onto the computer
open the file just taken from the backup

If at any time, the backup does NOT contain the proper information, fix it. Fix it yourself if you know how, or call a professional [The Computor Tutor] to address it. It IS that important.

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, is it backed up and tested, and is it turned on?

Unplugged

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