Back Ups

Backups

The Majestic PC. Strong, Proud, and ready to crash and burn with all your data at a moments notice.

What are you doing to back up your mission critical data? What is your disaster recovery plan? Have you even thought about one?

It's probably safe to assume that since you are reading this, you run your dealership from your PC. Or maybe you only rely on your PC for email or web access. However you look at it, your PC is probably involved in your business and what is on it and what you do on it is critical to your success. What would you do if your PC crashed? What if your business data what fried? How would you get it back?

BACKUPS my friend. When it comes to managing your PC, there is nothing more annoying than backups. However, they have to be done. Most versions of Windows ship with a back up application, and there are many you can download for free, or purchase. Let's talk about a few and backup methodology.

If you are running Windows XP Professional or Vista, you have backup software. In XP, its located in the SYSTEM TOOLS section, and in Vista, you can simply type in BACK UP in the search field and find the BACK UP and RESTORE CENTER. In either case, you are presented with options to backup your entire PC or select files. Windows Backup is not perfect, but odds are you have it and it's relatively painless to setup.

In the case of a single PC, I recommend backing up select files. In the case of a disaster, odds are you are only going to either reinstall or purchase a new OS, so system type files will be replaced anyway. What you want to save are your business records, contacts, emails, favorites, etc. You can even back up on a set schedule. The two main methods of backup are FULL and INCREMENTAL. Full is fairly self explanatory. Basically whatever you schedule to back up with the full option will get overwritten when it runs. The plus is you are ensuring yourself an entire back up, the downside is EVERY file gets backed up, whether it needs to or not. So if you have a lot a data, your backup is going to take awhile.

Incremental backups only backup what has changed since the last back up. If you worked on a particular spreadsheet that day, and that was it, your incremental back up will be quick and easy. A good rule of thumb to follow is two full backups a week (typically at the beginning and middle of the week) and the rest can be incremental.

Of course there would be no point in backing up to the same location, so lets talk MEDIA. Where are you going to put this stuff? Easy...removable media. Nowadays you can go down to your local Best Buy store and pick up a few gigs for a few bucks. Western Digital makes some great pocket type external hard drives, up to 300GBs, for less than $100.00. And although a dont recommend it, you can also backup to your hard drive and archive to a CD or DVD. Of course if you forget to do this then you will kick yourself.

So if you don't want to use Windows Backup, what is out there? Check this out

http://tinyurl.com/dnmzvb

There are tons of options. Those are just the free ones! So get yourself setup with a decent backup scheme asap!