Backed up your mobile/PC data? It’s useless unless…

Backed up your mobile/PC data? It's useless unless…

Backed up your mobile/PC data? It’s useless unless…

After the worst computer problems in banking history, causing a punitive shockwave for customers of NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank and Think Banking, it’s worth considering your own personal data backup.

Running a big website, I’ve a constant paranoia about catastrophic failure and losing both the backup of the site content and the email list.

In the early days, I’d regularly nag my webmaster with “we do have everything backed up?” questions. Yet it was only when we first had a problem I discovered backing up is only half the issue.

Having the data stored means nothing if you can’t swiftly use it to return to how it should be. I remember once being down for a couple of days due to exactly that fault. It was all backed up, but we couldn’t populate the site easily again.

Therefore, the question I ask now is: “Do we have backup and restore plans in place?” Of course, the restore part is easier said than done for non-techies for their own PCs or mobiles. Testing whether you can restore data could be the very thing that predicates disaster.

So ask yourself now, if you’ve got important data backed up – be it financial spreadsheets, contact information, or a key work portfolio – if you couldn’t restore your tech to the state it should be in, can you at least access the data in a useable way? If not, you need to sort it out.

Thoughts and experiences welcome…