FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 1-27-06: Three Cautionary Tales

Today’s Backup Reminder comes courtesy of faithful reader Mike Van Horn ([email protected]).

Here are my three favorite cautionary tales, from my own clients:

1. Pat religiously backs up to his external hard drive. One morning he comes to work to discover that his securely locked office has been broken into. Bypassing the locked door, the thief pounded a hole through the sheet rock wall with a hammer. Pat’s computer was stolen—along with the attached hard drive back up.
2. Marge has an automatic backup system that mirrors her office’s central server. When the main server went down, she confidently went to the backup server, only to discover that it was not operating. When she asked her office manager about this, the response was, “Oh yeah, I noticed awhile back that the server over in the corner was acting strange, but I forgot to tell you about it. What was that one for, anyway?”
3. Joe had not one, but two redundant back up systems, under the watchful eye of his IT manager, Bob. When one of these malicious viruses corrupted the main system, Bob tried to restore it from the back up, but instead infected the back up as well. Then, while trying to maneuver the second backup server into a better position, it accidently fell off the cart onto the concrete floor, damaging its hard drive. Five minutes, three systems destroyed! Bob was really indignant when he was fired.

Could this happen to you? If so, take a minute now to think about what you can do to prevent it. If not, why not? Post your answers here!