I was minding my own business a couple of weeks ago when I returned from lunch and re-booted my computer only to be greeted by a scary message: Disk Failure – Cannot Access Data. This led to several days of angst as the experts at Union Square Computers in downtown Hickory replaced my hard drive and were able to save my data, which I had not recently backed up. By “not recently” I mean, well, I had not backed it up during the last year.
Having survived this ordeal with my data intact, I sat down with Ed Cooper and Chuck Simmons at Union Square Computers to get their advice on what small businesses — including myself — should be doing to protect their computers and data from inevitable hardware and software issues. Ed and Chuck formed Union Square Computers six years ago, and their company provides computer repair and support, as well as website development and design and e-commerce solutions. Although they advise clients to have best practices in place before disaster strikes, a lot of the services that Union Square Computers provides are responsive as they work to help their customers deal with recovering lost data and handling the damage created by computer viruses.
Their first piece of advice is to make sure you download the free updates for your software on a regular basis. Too often these updates are ignored, so actively check for software updates including updates for your anti-virus software and operating system.
Ed reminds users to make sure their anti-virus program is active. If you’re using a subscription to Norton, McAfee, or another commercial brand, make sure your subscription is paid and up-to-date as often people operate their computers with the incorrect assumption that they are protected while they are actually using an expired subscription. Ed and Chuck also recommend several free programs for computer protection such as AVG and CCleaner. “These two free programs are lightweight and don’t use a lot of system resources and memory,” explains Cooper. Basic versions of the software are free, with premium versions available for a fee.
As I can now attest, it’s important to have a back-up system in place to avoid putting yourself in a position where you can lose important data. Ed and Chuck recommend using multiple back-up strategies in case one fails. External hard drives are common and fairly easy to use, but “cloud” solutions such as Carbonite.com are becoming more common for saving data through third party data centers. “Cloud solutions are inexpensive, usually costing less than $60 per year to keep large amounts of data secure,” says Cooper, “but it can take a long time to upload and retrieve your data from the site.” Ed and Chuck also remind their customers to test their back-up systems to make sure they can actually retrieve their data.
The cloud and online solutions are becoming more common for sharing information and for enhancing productivity. But even as innovations occur there will continue to be hardware and software mishaps in our future. For those of us who can’t afford to have their own IT departments, Union Square Computers and similar companies will be there to keep our computers and equipment operational.
Do you have a business question or topic that would make a good column? Send your ideas or questions to jeff.neuville@b-assistnc.com and share your business experience with others.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement