Data Disasters: Did You Forget Your Mobile Workforce? FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 08-15-08

The Ur-Guru and I have just returned from a week of Extreme Tourism in Chicago. He took 28 GB of photos. Each night he copied them all from his camera’s 8 GB Compact Flash card onto the two portable hard drives he’d brought along. (One serves as the original, one as the backup, and then he clears off card so he can take more pictures.)

We also fixed my father’s wireless router, so there’s wi-fi in his 45th-floor apartment again, but I had to use webmail for outgoing messages because RCN (Dad’s cable Internet provider) appears to block any outgoing traffic from non-RCN senders.

Anyway, I’m back home with another guest post for you, this one from Ken Colburn of Data Doctors.

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Data Disasters: did you forget your mobile workforce?

A hard drive crashes every 15 seconds…

2,000 laptops are stolen or lost every day…

1 in 5 computers suffers a fatal hard drive crash during their lifetime…
31% of PC users have lost all of their files due to events beyond their control…

60% of companies that lose all their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster…

The overall average failure rate of disk drives is 100% - all drives eventually fail…

And another hard drive just crashed while you were reading this.

Will one of yours be next? Are you prepared?

If you ask your IT department, they will assure you that the primary servers are being backed up every day and that an off-site data storage component is in place, so no matter what happens, the company is covered.

What most IT departments fail to recognize is that as much as 60% of a company’s mission critical data resides on hard drives that are not being backed up.

Your mobiles sales team, your CEO’s laptop, remote users or offices; the list can go on.

The assumption by the IT staff that all the users are following the company policy for backing up critical data is generally flawed.

In reality, getting 100% compliance from all users is virtually impossible because of a single hurdle; human nature. Everyone knows that a hard drive could fail at any moment, but no one thinks it’s going to happen to them, so they will do it tomorrow.

In providing data recovery services for over a decade, a pattern has emerged as more companies rely on computers; critical data is being lost on a regular basis.

The proliferation of the laptop computer as well as the increase in remote workers and even the digital camera (of all things) are primary drivers.

I regularly run into mobile salespeople throughout the country and in every discussion I hear the same thing: “I would be totally screwed if my laptop crashed or got stolen” and it’s usually followed by “my IT guys just don’t understand”.

Digital cameras have also increased the need for data recovery because digital images are not thought of as “data”… until they are gone! We routinely see a drive in for data recovery that has thousands of mission critical images on it that no one thought to backup or were so large that they did not fit into traditional backup procedures.

Even with the realization that their future is in jeopardy, statistically only 1 in 4 users will regularly back up their files. Why? It’s generally too technical or time consuming.

Another common mistake that some IT departments make is assume that if the critical data is being backed up and we can replace a laptop with an image of the corporate software, we have everything covered.

We routinely see customers pleading for help because they installed a special program that only they needed and no one took this into consideration during their disaster planning.

In a perfect IT world, everyone is using the exact same software on every remote or mobile system, but the reality for most is that no two computers are exactly the same.

Some of the biggest offenders of not following the IT department standards are upper management and they often times have some of the most mission critical data on their systems.

100% of all Data Loss is PREVENTABLE!

There are a number of personal backup solutions that IT departments should consider implementing as an additional layer for their mobile workforce.

We have been working with folks on backup procedures for long enough to understand some of the biggest roadblocks…users don’t know how to backup and even if they do, they don’t have any idea where on the hard drive this data resides, much less taking the time to actually do it.

The best chances for success and a huge time saver for the IT department for when (not if) a hard drive crashes is an automatic whole drive imaging system. (The expense of one data recovery will usually pay for 4 or 5 personal backup systems.)

If you can reduce the point of failure down to “can I get my users to plug this device in” your chances of success are much higher.

By eliminating all of the technical aspects of the backup process you can expect non-technical mobile and remote users to be much more successful in protecting themselves.

One solution is to install an automated imaging program that automatically fires whenever the external backup device is plugged in and/or setting a scheduler to automatically backup (and pester the user when it has not been done) to an external device.

Another great option for field personnel is an automated Internet based backup service. Once the client software is installed, it can automatically push copies of critical data up to a secured Internet server and be setup to pester users whenever it does not occur.

The bottom line on covering your bases is to really cover all your bases, so don’t forget your mobile and remote users!

External backup solution:
http://www.datadoctors.com/products/datavault

Online backup solution for businesses (Free 30-day trial): http://www.rdbup.com/partner/?id=datadrs

Shaking Up Your Backups: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 07-20-07

The earthquake at much-too-early-AM today reminded me that it really might be a better idea to sleep with the computer under the bed than on top of it. On the other hand, I’d probably give myself a hernia reaching for it every morning, and the ceiling is the only thing that can actually fall on it where it is. And if that happens, I might not be around to worry about my data. (Yes, I sleep with my computer, at least when the Ur-Guru isn’t here. So sue me.)

Though my clients might still be around to worry about their data, in which case it might be useful if someone knew my main password. If the machine is trashed, one ought to be able to get to the data by removing the drive altogether, but if it’s only the Sallie that’s trashed, perhaps better to keep the computer intact. (Though I don’t know…maybe I’d prefer to have it self-destruct if I stop breathing. I go back and forth on these kinds of things.)

Let’s pass over the question of whether it’s morbidity or senility that turning 40 has brought me, however, and get on to the stories I said I’d have for you last week. So we’ll start with Sandy’s dead CrackBerry. Sandy is the author of the about-to-be released book fEmpowerment: A Guide to Unleashing Your Inner Bond Girl, but no special effects were used in the creation of this story.

My BlackBerry has “off and on” had the bottom line of keys stop working (that means, for example, b-n-m do not work). A “hard reboot” (dumping the battery out and back in) fixes it. It doesn’t happen all that often, so I hadn’t taken the time to go get another machine from the Nextel folks.

Monday, I was out and about, and (of course) I have a passcode on my BlackBerry. My passcode includes the letter “B.” I’m sure that you can imagine where this is going… I hit the passcode to get in a few times, “counting down” the passwords you’re “allowed.” Used them all—it dumped the BlackBerry and then gave me a “507” error (which is a circle with a line through it, over a small picture of the screen—not very pleasant).

After I cursed a lot, I had a “light bulb” moment and realized what had probably happened. So I went home, since now the machine was a hunk of junk. (Have you seen the guy put the iPhone through the blender in “Will it Blend?” That’s how I felt.) I figured that I had to call support and they would ask for my mother’s maiden name and 2nd aunt’s middle initial, and then they would allow me to boot up the hunk of junk.

Uh—no. If you do this, your BlackBerry gets fried. As in no retrieval-oh.

Luckily I synch the BlackBerry every day when I get home—so I’d “only” lost what I’d done that day while out and about. And far MORE luckily, I have a service plan that includes “real person” support, so I toddled off to the Nextel store, and they replaced it with a new machine, and I synched it up to the computer, and downloaded all the info back into it.

So, that’s the words to the wise.

I don’t actually use any kind of a PDA at all, but having no option but to recycle the hardware seems like a slightly extreme reaction to password problems, and it’s not like Sandy was carrying military secrets around. I suspect this particular “feature” of the BlackBerry was invented to satisfy security-conscious enterprise and government users, who are daily embarrassed by stories of laptops, backup tapes, and the like falling into the wrong hands.

It’s harder to see the value of total hardware lockout to an individual. And come to that, frying the device if you mess up your password doesn’t prevent employees from deliberately passing on company data. I hope they can at least send it back to the factory and get it refurbished and reissued.

On the other hand, Sandy did get a new device with working keys out of the adventure. Because the data was backed up, having to replace the BlackBerry was annoying and inconvenient, but not catastrophic.

Then there was my colleague Donna Papacosta in Canada, where Apple is apparently less paranoid about repossessing dead hard drives than they are in the US. Her 13-month-old MacBook keeled over without warning one day. “Of COURSE my files were backed up,” she said in response to my comment on her original post. “Except for the ones that weren’t.”

Unless you’re using a continuous data protection solution that copies everything the minute it changes (and eats bandwidth for breakfast), you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose *some* files if you suffer a fatal drive error. Donna is now backing up several times a day, both online and to an external drive. That’s often enough that anything that slips through the cracks is probably something you can live without, or recent enough to be easier to re-create than the project you were working on last week.

Get all the details of Donna’s MacBook adventures on the Trafcom News Blog. But make a backup before you go off to read it.

Downloads, DRM, & Backups: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 02-09-07

I haven’t written about backing up downloads before, because it’s not something I do much of, myself. (Well, okay—I do keep copies of program install files.) After all, if I downloaded a file once, I can download it again, as long as I know where to get it. And anyway, if the file is, say, a PDF of a white paper about backups (I’ve lost count of the number of those I’ve downloaded over the years), it ends up in my IT info folder and gets backed up with the rest of my data. Programs I’ve downloaded and not yet installed, like podcasts I’ve downloaded and not yet listened to, get backed up when I make a drive image, or as part of the automated backups to my shared storage drive.

But why worry about losing something that you download from the Internet? Unlike files you create yourself, you always download them again—can’t you?

You can if you’re like me and what you download is freely available. Backing up things that you’ve paid for the privilege of downloading is something else again. Welcome to the wonderful world of Digital Rights Management (“DRM” for short).

Even I am not living under a rock to the extent that I don’t know that the music industry frowns on bootleg copies, and Hollywood doesn’t appreciate them, either. In fact, most people who make money by selling their intellectual property aren’t too keen on having someone else take their stuff and give it away. And when people take our stuff and sell it, we get really burned up.

Book publishers have the security of knowing that it usually costs more to photocopy a book than to buy one, but copying electronic files is normally fast, easy, and cheap. This results in attempts to copy-proof digital media. These attempts frequently backfire, creating serious PR problems for the media company. (Anyone remember the Sony rootkit scandal?)

Worse yet, neither proprietary file formats nor any other kind of DRM will deter a determined professional cracker for long. Illegal copies of Windows Vista have been available for weeks. At best, DRM might keep out the amateurs. At worst, it punishes the very people who have done the right thing and paid for the files.

My only personal encounter with the problem came shortly after I bought an iriver IFP-795 to record presentations with. I decided to test it out as a listening device, too, so I transferred a couple of podcasts onto it with the iriver Music Manager. Later I wanted to move them onto the SanDisk Sansa 230 I normally use for listening, but found I couldn’t. The iriver Music Manager refuses to let you copy files from the player onto the computer. It doesn’t matter whether there’s any DRM on the actual files. The software assumes that any audio format besides its own .REC files is copyrighted, copy-protected material, and therefore it can only be transferred in one direction: from the computer to the player.

Even though this was a minor inconvenience (I just downloaded the MP3 again and put it on the Sansa, which sensibly acts just like a memory stick and lets you move things onto and off it without complaining), I was seriously annoyed.

This is the kind of thing that has led to the creation of third-party programs like the iBack iPod backup tool, which is designed to let you copy files from your iPod to any computer, and GetData’s Recover My iPod, which rescues iPod owners from the loss of their iTunes collection when they reinstall their computers and from assorted firmware problems with the iPod itself.

iTunes itself will let you back up to a CD or DVD. Just go to File | Back Up to Disc. You have the option of backing up the whole library and your playlists, or just your iTunes store purchases. The initial dialog box contains the helpful tip “To restore from a backup disc, open iTunes and insert the disc.” That sounded simple enough.

I decided to try it out, and discovered that I had more in my iTunes library than I’d realized. To expedite this experiment, I cleaned out the files I didn’t need so that everything would fit on one CD. It still took a surprisingly long time to burn the CD, but the result is a perfectly normal data CD with the different MP3 files stored in folders according to artist name. Copying individual files back onto the computer from the CD was no problem.

The author of the Hacking Netflix blog points out that most download services, including Wal-Mart, Amazon, and iTunes, will not let you download your movies again if the files are lost or damaged. Since you have proof that you did pay for the files, this seems pretty outrageous at first blush. On the other hand, I don’t suppose the local movie store would give me another copy of a DVD just because I showed them a receipt and said I’d lost or broken the first one, either. And I’d have trouble proving that I hadn’t made a copy of it.

As long as your download service lets you make backup copies, your downloads are as safe as the rest of your data—assuming, of course, that you go ahead and make those backups. Avoid any service that doesn’t provide you with an option to back up the files, and any files that you can’t copy back and forth to your computer.

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-28-06: Back Up Sagaciously

Apologies for the late reminder message. On the fourth Friday of every month I go to the Bay Area Consultants Network meeting in San Rafael, and I have to leave here at 6:45 AM. I'm a morning person, but not enough so that I can necessarily write and send this reminder before I go out.

Our main speaker today was Ed Correia of Sagacent Technologies, Inc. His topic was mobile connectivity and productivity, but the subject of backups inevitably arose. Sagacent is called in to fix a couple of hard drives every month, and more than once Ed has seen cases where the backup drive and the main drive both failed at the same time.

Ed is less fond of external hard drives as backup systems than I am. I agree with him that if your internal drive can fail, your external drive certainly can, and hard drives, what with their moving parts, are at risk of failure.

On the other hand, every backup medium is at risk of failure. DVDs and CDs can get scratched. Tapes can get tangled up. Flash drives get re-set. Paper printouts can get burned or shredded. Anything at all can be stolen. That’s why the answer to the question “How many backups do you really need?” is “Just one more.”

Ed backs his personal data up onto DVD each week and puts the DVDs in the safe-deposit box, and I think that’s as good a strategy as any. I haven’t developed that discipline yet (first I need a safe-deposit box), but I endorse it. I do make year-end backups not only of my Quicken data but of all my client data, and keep them outside my office.

For enterprise backups, Ed recommends reputable online backup services, the kind that use solid equipment in secure data centers and back their own servers up to other servers. A single drive “server” isn’t really sufficient for a company’s critical data; better to have a RAID system where the drives are mirrored. (Of course, there are disadvantages to that, too: any errors in the data on the first disk will simply be duplicated on all the rest of them.)

And speaking of data, Ed made an interesting point about how much data you carry along with you. He keeps his laptop clean of data except for the presentations that he’s giving with it. For anything else he needs, he connects back to his office computer using GoToMyPC, or relies on his Palm Treo smartphone.

This led to some wag (not me, honest!) asking how he backs up the Treo. His answer: Sprite Backup, about which I’ve seen a few press releases. For about $30 you get a downloadable backup program for your Pocket PC or smartphone. You can make manual or scheduled backups to the flash memory card in your device. Ed Correia has a 1 GB flash memory card, which holds his backups and then some.

After listening to him make his point about what would happen to you if your laptop with all your confidential data got swiped, I couldn’t resist asking what would happen if he lost his flash memory card. “Then I’d be crying in my coffee,” he admitted, though he does sometimes take that card and copy all the information to his desktop machine back in the office. (He also only syncs the Treo to the desktop machine, not to the data-free laptop.)

This demonstrates just how difficult it is not to keep vulnerable data with you if you’re actually going to be productive when you’re out and about. Even if you didn’t bring it with you, you’re likely to create it if you’re out for very long. And whether or not there are security implications, just not having that data (I’m thinking of the numbers in my non-smart cell phone) is a setback.

I have to admit that the password on my secondary laptop (the one I was taking notes on) wouldn’t be too hard to crack. (Really confidential information goes into encrypted files, though any skilled hacker could break into that, too.) I’ve been planning to reinstall Star now that Enna is successfully up and running, and I think keeping her drive empty of anything but what I need when I take her out is a fine idea.

One of the phrases we kept coming back to this morning was Einstein’s line about how things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. You can set yourself up for trouble by trying to keep things too easy. If you have more than one computer or device, you need to back up each of them.

The extra steps involved in backing up to more than one medium and keeping backups in more than one location can seem like an unnecessary pain. The first time your office or home is broken into, you’ll learn why it was you were supposed to keep data backups offsite, and why it can be worth the monthly fee for the online data service.

As I said to a colleague after the presentation was over, any backup is better than no backup. There is such a thing as a point of diminishing returns. Even so, it’s worth taking a look at your current systems to see whether there’s something you can do which gives you an extra layer of protection against theft, fire, or the failure of your backup hard drive.