In order to protect yourself from catastrophic loss, you must have a well thought out restoration strategy in mind. It's well and good that you have copies of all your software applications in your office, but what happens if that is lost?

You might have a safe where you keep your backup media, but is it fire safe where backup media is concerned? Many safes designed as fire safe are designed to be fire safe for paper . . . not for media which can be damaged at a much lower temperature.

Several software packages can help you do regular backups without requiring too much intervention. For a single-user environment, Retrospect Express can help you write a simple script which will execute whenever you designate. Be sure to have a few sets of media that you rotate, just in case something happens to one set of media.

The practice in our office is to burn a complete copy of each hard drive on some sort of removable media at the end of each year. We actually burn 2 copies, one for out of the office and one for in the office. That way if a machine goes down, we can get back up and running more quickly than we would be able to if we had to reinstall everything.

By doing this, we also remove the requirement of backing up all of our applications and system in our weekly backup. What we actually put on our weekly system is all working files, fonts, and our system preferences.

We also take advantage of Retrospect's capabilities to send critical files automatically across the internet to a secure offsite server. In the event of a catastrophic loss at our office, we could restore our applications from our offsite sets, and our working files from the offsite remote backup.

Maccimizer can help you craft a backup strategy for your business, no matter how large or small. Feel free to contact us for a risk-free consultation or page us for immediate response.

Maccimizer is proud to be a part of the Dantz Solutions Providers program, and is certified by Dantz to provide Retrospect support and consulting solutions.