Save Often. Save Often. Save Often.

I'm sure nobody has missed out on any of the storms happening here in New York. Even our lights have been flickering. Mother nature can be cruel to your IT; a well-placed bolt of lightning can do plenty of damage. Of course, we always recommend quality UPS systems to our clients to protect their most valuable tech, and good surge protectors for everything else (not power strips, mind you, they aren't the same). Regardless, whether there's a risk of the power going out or not, it's important to save often and keep your files backed up. Here's a few tips after the jump.

Save, Save, Save!

We know how it goes, you're working on a document and you're churning along at a good clip, you just don't think about saving. We've been there. Plenty of applications have autosave features that save the file every few minutes. Check to see if your application does, or if you'd like, have us see if there is a solution to automate that for your application of choice.

Store it on the Server

It's much more likely your organization's server is more protected than your workstation. If your file is tucked away on your workstation, it makes it much more difficult for someone else in your organization to find it if needed. Plus, if your organization is using a backup solution, it's likely backing up the server, not the workstations, which leads me to my next tip.

Back your work up!

Running a business without a backup solution is like driving down the highway blindfolded. You should have a backup and disaster recovery device that you can test often, that takes frequent backups (at the very least, hourly) and can back up open files. Also, your backup solution should be able to quickly restore files, and in the case of a real disaster, like a tornado, flood, or fire, it is a good idea to archive your backups offsite.

We urge our clients to live by these tips, and we can help provide the best practices and solutions to ensure that when there is a disaster, or even just a simple brown out, things can go back to normal once power is restored.