Few people equate time management skills with computer maintenance. After all, backing up is one more chore on the daily list of things you struggle to get done. It is easy to overlook this and focus on the crisis of the day.
However consider some of the statistics assembled by Computer Moms (www.computermoms.com):
96% of all business workstations are not being backed up. Main servers usually are, but not individual PCs. –Contingency Planning & Strategic Research Corp.
25% of all PC users suffer from data loss each year. –Gartner Group
7 out of 10 small firms with a major data loss close their doors within a year. –DTI/Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2004
Compare the number of days and dollars involved in reconstructing data versus the time it would take to back up once a week, as determined by the National Computer Security Association:
- 19 days and $17,000 to redo 20 MB of sales/marketing data
- 42 days and $98,000 to redo 20 MB of engineering data
Add to this the anxiety and stress as you go through that. It makes sense to include backing up your computer as one of your time management processes.
1 response so far ↓
1 Van // Oct 23, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Your article makes an excellent point indeed!
Recovering data from a failed drive especially a hard disk with physical damage to the data platter can be very expensive.
When you compare this cost to the current level of expense associated with backing up even relatively large amounts of priceless data, it becomes even more compelling to take this preventative measure.
Even the effort involved has been minimized through modern technology. Simply installing a second hard drive in a RAID 1 configuration to automatically mirror the contents of the first drive would greatly reduce the probability of complete data loss. This can be done for a mere $60 dollars.
Leave a Comment