News Group Posts

value of backup; tape drives;

insurance

From: bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: Software Disk Image
References: <3f0bfe7a@news.userve.net>
<HHrzv5.28G@stevedunn.ca>
<3f0d1eb3$1@news.userve.net>
<bem4le$vor$2@pcls4.std.com> 
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 14:27:26 GMT

In article <bem4le$vor$2@pcls4.std.com>,  <tony@aplawrence.com> wrote:
>Martin Roclawski <m.roclawski@xremovexdenisonmayesgroup.com> wrote:
>>Cheers for the info Steve.

>>It seemed alot easier when discussing the concept with my people here!!!

>Yeah, it always does.  I must hear this a couple of times a month,
>and while it's not necessarily a BAD idea if it's combined with
>other real backup, it's usually proposed a a way to avoid tapes or 
>other storage and as that, it's dumb.

Speaking of that - [I may have mentioned this before] - I had been
prodding a client to take his backup tapes off site for years.

Then one day while reading his insurance policy to see what was
covered - he found that his business interuption service would not
cover any losses because of lost data if he did not have off-site
backups.

I've had weekly backups go off-site every week for the past 4 years
now - with never a miss.  I also get email on the backups just in
case they don't read their email - which happened to another
customer of mine.  He wound up with other people advising him and
when a fire totally destroyed everthing the only data he had was
made by the other people copying the data onto an MS machine and
making a CD.   

When I told him the cost it would take to figure out all the real
file names and processes in the database - that were converted from
14 characters to a 8.3 MS format - he about fell over.  Then the
people who did this told him he could take the HDs in the machine
and send them to a data-recovery company.  That was also very
expensive.

The cost of a tape drive and decent software - the supertars often
recommend here are great [I have sites running both BackupEdge 
and LoneTar] - are very cheap when you consider 

1) the cost of rebuilding data that is not recoverable
2) the cost of recovering data that is not in an easily
        recoverable format
3) the lost income while waiting for data to be restored.

With the emergency disks and off-site backups you can often start
restoring the system in under 10 minutes if your hd contollers
match.

Here's an old anecdote about the person above who lost his whole
building to fire and thus the data.

Years ago - when he was on SCO and filePro - he lost his tape
drive - an old Archive 525MB.   I found out about this after
a call about something else let me know they had not had a good
backup for months - the new person did NOT know she was supposed to
get email on backups each day - or to check for them.

He was complaining about the cost of the tape drive being over
$500.

I said something like this.

Q: "Do you want to save some money - have a tape drive - and 
        even have money left over?"
A: "Yes"

"Then cancel your fire insurance, buy a tape drive, and have a
party with the rest of the money, because your computer will crash
long before you building burns down".

This was in another building and about 10 years before the current
building burned down - and he did have a couple of computers replaces
in the interim.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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