Taking Precautions

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The most valuable part of your system?

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Should your computer system be stolen, damaged by fire or whatever, your insurance policy will cover replacement hardware or possibly software. It may even by covered by warranty against mechanical failure.

However none of these can replace the most valuable part of your system - your business data. Just think of the hours of work spent keeping those accounts up to date - or the effect on your business should you lose details of all your clients or prospective customers.

Thankfully it is not often that systems fail, but when they do the effect on your business can be little short of disaster. Just as we readily insure our plant and other items essential to our businesses, we should spend a little time periodically taking the precautions listed below.

The wisest precaution is to make regular backups. A backup is a separate copy of all your data files (or even the whole system) on some media that you can take away and store in a safe place.

The various ways of making a backup

Whatever system you use:

• Make sure that you test your backup is working from time to time. Do this by creating a few dummy or test items, before you backup. Then after backing-up delete these and make sure that you can restore them from the backup media.
• Rotate your media (or keep one or two older versions as well as the most recent).
• To ensure maximum safety keep your backup copies in a secure location off the premises.

Making Emergency Recovery discs (or emergency repair discs) from time to time is another wise precaution.
An ERD is a floppy disc which holds information about your system and its configuration, but it is not a substitute for a backup, as it does not store your data files. It is used when your system crashes and will not start-up properly, and will need to have your original Windows CD to hand if you need to use it.

NOTE: If you system has crashed, you will need to do an emergency repair before you can restore any files from a backup

It is good advice to make a repair disc about once a month.

Virus Protection

Computer Viruses are malicious short programs that can infect programs or documents and like real viruses have the ability to copy or replicate themselves. On this page is further information and advice on protecting your system.

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