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By Walter Scott
Michael DiMichele, a computer consultant for SMBs and a longtime radio personality in the Chicago area has been addressing backup issues for small companies for years. DiMichele recognizes that SMBs are at a disadvantage when it comes to IT support.
“Large companies have staffs dedicated to maintaining computer-related assets while an SMB is often lucky to have a person who knows how to boot a computer into Safe Mode, let alone what to do once you get there,” he said. “Far too much emphasis is put on backup per se and far too little is put on having a plan and the tools to restore that backup.
“Suffering some kind of computer system failure is not such a farfetched idea and it can happen to you,” DiMichele said. “Disk drives fail. Computer viruses happen. Important files and folders get deleted. This happens every day and there is no excuse for an entrepreneur or small business executive to say that they weren’t prepared.”
Creating an image on a server, desktop or laptop can be automated. Protecting an SMB’s computers can be as simple as running a software wizard telling the system when it should back up and where the backup should be saved and then pressing OK.
For his consulting clients, DiMichele recommends that they have two removable disk drives where images are stored — one onsite and one offsite. That way, should one drive be damaged, a second is readily available to restore the system.
“In a large enterprise, there is often some kind of redundancy for servers,” he said. “Most SMBs cannot afford the capital costs associated with first-tier IT disaster recovery programs, so these companies have to think smarter and leverage their resources. A good backup plan not only saves your data, it saves you money and more importantly, your work.”
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