An email sent to all the Moran Industries franchisees by their Communications Director, Jill Bostwick. The service was tested extensively tested by their IT manager and we are now a preferred vendor for Moran Industries.

Back Ups

Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data.

I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash but when it happens they wish they were dead!

Its 3 AM, do you know where your computer data is? Your contacts, your payroll information, your personal pictures (not those personal pictures, the family ones). You say they're sitting on your C: drive? You sure? Disaster comes in many forms; storms, hardware failure, power surges, fires, theft. No problem you say, I back up every night. Destroy my expensive piece of computer equipment! Throw my data to the wind! I HAVE THE BACK UP DISK! You cannot destroy me you say standing outside your shop with your arms outstretched holding your CD high in the air cursing at the wind, lightning and thunder dancing around your crazed head.

OK maybe that's a bit on the dramatic side but I cannot stress enough the importance of doing your backups. While most of the time, files can be recovered from systems with problems, if your hard disk physically fails, it is very nice to know your data is backed up on another medium. How can you make sure that your critical files are available if your disk fails? There are several methods of backup available to you for just such a situation. The most common are:

• Diskette/Zip disk storage
• CD-R(w) storage
• Tape Backup Units
• Remote Data Backups

The two types of backup that I would recommend for backups are CD-RW's and Remote Data Back-ups. CD-RW disks allow you to write multiple times to the same CD. Standard CD-R(W) disks can store 700 Megabytes of data. They are relatively inexpensive and require little time.

Remote Data Backups are another good alternative. Laura has tested this product at Moran and was very successful on recovering data with one of our computer crashes. For 100 MB of backup space the cost is $9.95 a month. This is a cost effective, secure, and convenient way to automatically back up your critical data every night. Once the service is setup, it requires no human intervention and requires no extra hardware. For more information on this service please contact Dan Dugal at (970) 407-1490 for more information.

- Jill Bostwick
Moran Industries Communication Director