| Loss of Data - Jefferson County Medical Society |
| Written by Administrator |
| Wednesday, 01 August 2007 16:05 |
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VOLUME 24, NO. 4 • JEFFERSON COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY • July/August 2007 LOSS OF DATA INCONVENIENCE OR DISASTER?Donald B. Moore, Director of Business Development at WebSafe, Inc.
DonaldB.Mooreter, Jason Bourne, possesses an array of extraordinary talents in fighting, linguistics, and selfdefense that speak of a dangerous past. He has one problem hecan’trememberhispast. Early in the movie, struggling with hislack of memory he says,“I can’t remember anything that happened more than two weeks ago“. Now, while you hopefully don’t have to face the issues that Jason Bourne had to dealwith regarding amnesia, ask yourself this question “What if my organization or family faced a situation where there was no way to “remember” or substantiate events that had happened more than two weeks ago?” This might occur as a result of fire, flood, hurricane, or simple hardware failure. Would this only be aninconvenience, maybe aloss of some bit of personalheritage, or at worst, a threat to my financialsurvival? In the traditionalworld, many things survive for an awfully long period of time just through benign neglect. For digitalthings, they willsurvive onlyif you plan and think systematically about their survival on a continuing basis. All devices eventually become unworkable or unusable (i.e. floppy disks or eight track tapes) so it is important to not only have a plan to manage storage of digitalitems but to also have a plan for eventualmigration to other media as well. Older storage strategies such as transferring files to tapes, CDs or DVDs are giving way to external hard drives and network storage devices which allow storage and sharing of data from several computers linked over a network. Online services that provide the ability for users to upload their files to the Web are growing in popularity as upload speeds haveincreased, though concerns about privacy and security exist regarding these services. Also keep in mind that recent studies suggest thatin the U.S., roughly 50% of computer users back up on CD/DVD or external hard drives with about 10% using online backup and almost 40% not backing
up at all. The latter option is obviously not a good choice to make. So which storage option is best for you? Inventory how much data storage you need, howimportant remote access is to you, and how secure you wouldlike the recorded data to be. Also, determine if you need to digitize (by scanning) yourimportant paper documents andinclude thisin your storage estimate. Andlastly, decideif you wouldlike other people to have access to this data, how many people, and by what method. Recordable CDs and DVDs are inexpensive and portable but their useful life is subject to debate. Some experts claim that a selfrecorded CD may have a shelflife of only 2 years. Heat andlight can damage CDs or DVDs;if you rely on this method you should be aware of risks such as nearby heat/fire or disks left in strong sunlight. Flash drives are inexpensive and useful for transferring data, but are quite easy tolose thus offering the potentialfor your data to get into the wrong hands. Portable hard drives connected via USB are very economical and can store several hundred gigabytes. They offer the advantage of quick data transfer and high capacity butif youleave them with your computer you riskloss ofinformationin the event of a fire or flood. Online storage offers several advantages over traditional means. Data is offsite which is a key recommendation in disaster planning. With an Internet based file storage system, theissue oflife expectancy of various types of storage media goes away as the provider should be giving you access through commonly used browsers or web folders. Your information should be available from any Internet connected computer, which is a great advantage should you suffer loss due to fire or flood. Other features which are attractive for online storage services include hardware independence (be able to access with Microsoft, Apple, Linux), collaboration, and contentinstructions as to whatis important to be saved. A limiting factor of online storage is upload speed. For example, DSL upload times may allow only 100MB per hour to be uploaded which may not be practical for large data collections. One approach is to store a large backup and then only “synchronize” data that has changed. This should become less of an issue as transfer rates increase. Also, if you choose online storage, your information should be encrypted both while in transit and while stored. Ideally you will be provided a unique encryption/decryption key for your safe so that if the provider’s site is “hacked”, the hacker would also need the key to your safe in order to see your information. Your storage strategy is an important decision and may involve more than one method. Equally important is making sure that you are backing up the right data. Many times backups have been run for years only to discover after a loss that the wrong data was being stored! Data is generally not worried about until it is “gone”. Take the time now to pick the correct approach and have the peace of mind that this very valuable asset is protected.
For more information, Don Moore can be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
or go to www.vitalesafe.com. |