Many business start-ups that I speak to are either one or two person micro-businesses, often their IT consists of a personal laptop, upon which is stored their entire company. Accounts, customer databases, marketing collateral, email, everything, all on that one fragile, vulnerable laptop hard drive.
I also regularly speak to laptop owners who have suddenly realised how vulnerable their data is, when that hard drive stops working. I’ve dealt with incidents where the drive has simply stopped working, the owner has leant on the case in just the wrong spot and crushed the drive, the laptop has been dropped, or fallen from the boot of the car, or the whole shebang has just been lost or stolen. I regularly observe people using ‘heavy handling’ of their laptops while the drive is in use, and I wonder if they know that they’re playing Russian Roulette. When the failure comes, as it surely will, you had better have a backup. Otherwise, the best case scenario is a bill approaching a four-figure sum from a specialist data recovery company. The worst case is that your business could die with that hard drive.
Sean Daniel retells a story where a friend suffered two hard drive failures within a few days leading up to a deadline for submitting an exam paper. Hard drive failure used to mean it was ‘Game Over’, but Sean’s friend suffered a relatively minor inconvenience and was able to submit their exam paper on time. How? The hard drives were backed up using a device similar to TiGra Networks’ Micro-business (μBiz) Server.
Our μBiz Server is a compact, low-cost ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ backup and remote access system that protects up to ten computers, daily, automatically. Recover single files or whole computers easily and in minutes. As an added bonus, the μBiz Server also works like a NAS (Network Attached Storage) providing a place to store shared documents, music, video with folder duplication automatically ensuring that no files will be lost if a hard drive fails. We recommend this solution for businesses with one to five computers. Although the μBiz server can protect up to 10 PCs, a Small Business Server makes more sense in a company of that size.
Some reports suggest that 43% of businesses that lose critical data never reopen. When your hard drive failure happens, is it going to be a minor inconvenience, or “Game Over” for your business?