Preparing for Murphy’s Law
Seven wise suggestions for backing up your computerized work
For most lawyers, the task of backing up computer files is about as attractive as daily flossing. But it’s just as essential to the health of your practice.
“Everybody’s going to suffer a loss of information somehow,” says Brad Harris, national IT manager for Bennett Jones LLP in Toronto. When a virus, theft, file corruption, hard drive meltdown, fire, or natural disaster strikes, not having a backup can literally put you out of business. Taking the following seven steps could be one of the best investments you ever make.
1. Choose the right media.
Bigger firms have traditionally relied on tape drives for point-in-time backups. For smaller firms, external hard drives are a cheaper option, and they often come with backup software. Plus, unlike portable media such as CDs, DVDs and USB drives, the process can be automated.
2. Back up frequently.
How many days — or even hours —of data can you afford to lose? Decide on a backup schedule that meets your needs, and then stick with it religiously.
3. Automate it.
Choose a system that depends on human action as little as possible. “If it’s not automated, it’s not going to happen,” says Steve Ellwood, president of Ellwood Associates, a Toronto-based legal technology consulting firm.
4. Alternate among several copies.
When you realize that you accidentally deleted an important file three days ago, you need to be able to recover it. Ellwood suggests making a separate backup for each day of the week that you don’t write over until the following week, plus archiving one weekly copy as extra insurance.
5. Keep one copy offsite.
Your backups are worthless if they were all stored in an office that just went up in flames or on the external hard drive that got stolen. Keep one at home, or even consider an out-of-town storage spot — many New Orleans residents who kept home backups were out of luck.
6. Get help.
If you don’t have in-house expertise, get a professional to set things up. It’s cheaper to pay for help now than after you’ve lost data and discovered your backup tape is blank.
7. Test it.
Similarly, test your backups regularly to ensure you really could restore your data if disaster struck.
— Julie Stauffer
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Comments/Discussion
Suffering through 2 major hard drive failures of my assistant's computer in the middle of real estate season led us to creating a multi-level backup system as follows that has saved our bacon on more than one occassion.
Each desktop has 2 drives that are ghotsted every second day to the other; Each desktop works off a server that is automatically syncronized to a central server, so if the server goes down we are still in business; The second drive on the desktop is automatically ghosted to the server; the server has 4 Raided drives for multiple redundancy with 2 power supplies and a battery backup; The server ghosts weekly to 2 external drives that are swapped weekly into a safety deposit box; The server also has a third external drive that is ghosted to daily, Finally all the data file on the server are backed up offsite over the internet to Carbonite which offers unlimited backup for $7.00/month.
We currently backup over 14 gigs of data, which is updated every 15 seconds or so. The actual system is not actaully that complicated and the harware was less than $15,000.00 and the software simply Norton Ghost and Carbonite on top of Windows Small Business Server with Client software. If anyone wants more info on our model, please contact me: Richard@athabascalaw.com 780-675-2534.
By: Richard Verhaeghe
Posted: 03-30-09
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In this document, any reference to "jurist" or "lawyer" includes, where appropriate, "Québec notary". |
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