Back-up policies and procedures (continued)

Who is responsible for back-ups?

Whoever is responsible for the back-up policy must communicate with the rest of the team, making sure everyone knows their responsibilities and any procedures they must follow to prevent problems. Ideally they will have the ICT skills to support individual users when they have problems; this certainly helps when you need a rapid response.

In large organisations this may be an in-house ICT support person, or an external company providing ICT support. Small organisations may rely on an ‘accidental techie’ or a volunteer, which makes it even more important that back-up policy is discussed at management level and that help is found to implement the best solution.

Protect your back-ups

After you’ve backed up your important personal files and information, make sure it’s safe:

• Make more than one copy and keep all backups away from your computer, preferably off-site. If you use a safety deposit box to protect valuable paper documents, consider keeping back-up CDs or DVDs there too. But be warned that a fire safe for paper documents won’t save a CD or memory key from a fire – they will melt.
• Delete old files and use compression software so that information takes up less space and stays tidy.
• Protect your back-up files with a password, especially if backing up personal or sensitive information. Write down your password and keep it in a secure location, such as a safety deposit box, along with your other personal documents.
• Make sure any software you’ve purchased on CD, together with its product key, is in a safe, retrievable place. If your hard disk drive should ever fail, you’ll need the disks to reinstall the software.

Data recovery

People often accidentally delete files or other information and then realise they need them. Whether you have a back-up or not you can use a data recovery program to ‘undelete’ files. Some are free, others you have to pay for. Some need to be installed before problems strike, others can be used after the event. Examples include r-undelete and Winundelete; have a look on www.download.com for more free or low-cost examples.

The key thing to remember with undeleting files is the need to act quickly, and for the best results it is always better to get expert help straight away. If you carry on using your computer it can start to write information over the top of deleted files, making it impossible to recover them, so if you have a problem stop working and get some help immediately.

Less common but equally disastrous is the failure of a hard drive.A sorry clunking sound from inside the computer usually heralds the death of a disk, making it impossible to access the information on it.

Depending on the problem, a specialist data service could expect to recover data from a dead disk in 80–90 per cent of cases, but it is a specialist service and you will usually pay according to the amount of data recovered – perhaps hundreds of pounds for a large hard drive. Ask for help from someone in the IT business locally; good data recovery services are usually well known.

Undeleting files and paying for large-scale data recovery is much less of a problem if you have a decent back-up policy in place.

Weblink: ICT Hub Knowledgebase

ICT Hub Knowledgebase has several very good articles on back-up and data recovery, as well as links to other online resources. Take a look at: www.icthubknowledgebase.org.uk/disasterpreparationrecovery

Test your back-ups

Don’t just assume your back-ups are working. Run a test case every now and then to make sure you can recover your work. You may have added new folders which aren’t being picked up in the back-up routine, or you may be relying on a file that has been corrupted in the back-up process.

Monthly checks are good; quarterly tests should be a minimum for even a small network of users.