All Recovery Is Not Created Equal

We have a saying at Asigra – you don’t treat your grandmother like you treat your daughter even though you love them both. You send your daughter to a kindergarten and your grandmother to a seniors’ center. We use this reference to get people thinking about how they should treat their data when it comes to backup and recovery. Stay with me here, it will make sense if you read a little further…

I should tell you first that I work in a business role and not a technical role, and to be truthful, this is not something I had given a lot of thought to in the past. As far as I was concerned, as long as all my data was backed up, I had nothing to worry about. Until one day 3 years ago when I was working for another employer and our Exchange Server crashed. Guess how long it took us to restore our email inbox and folders? Three weeks.  THREE WEEKS!

Now, imagine for a minute what sort of information is in your emails and inbox – mostly items that are current and need to be accessed regularly, right? Then imagine what files are in your desktop for recordkeeping – presentations you may have done 1-2 years ago, perhaps financial records that are even older and are being held for auditing reasons. Do you need those to get your job done today? If you were able to choose which files got recovered first after a data loss event, what would your decision be? Would you like to have that choice?

All data is not created equal. So why should your data backup and more importantly, your recovery?  

Image:jenny818 on Flickr