Computer data is one of your most precious business assets. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most fragile. Most computer users know that they're supposed to back up their data, but how many of us bother to do it? It takes time and discipline to follow a regular backup schedule, and it's easy to tell yourself that nothing bad is likely to happen. No one really believes that a disaster will ever strike them.

Expect the Unexpected
"I've had a few clients who've lost everything because they didn't think they ever would," says Eddie Codel, a systems engineer in San Francisco. "You can never be sure tapes have actually done their job until you need them to save you. That's usually when you find out you're screwed."

A large Chicago advertising agency lost almost everything shortly after moving into their new office space. Their still-embarrassed systems administrator remembers, "We'd been in our offices about a week, and the cleaning staff was leaving for the night. They flipped a switch on their way out. It wasn't until the next day that we realized this seemingly innocuous switch in a hallway turned off everything in the control room. We did have backups, but some machines were set to back up only once a week. For a creative agency, losing a week's worth of employee ideas is a real blow."

Save Early, Save Often
Systems administrators probably know more about computers than anyone in the office, but the best of them don't pretend to be able to fix every problem. Ultimately, it's up to your employees to know how to protect themselves against computer crashes.

An independent systems consultant (who wishes to remain nameless) recently ran into this problem at a San Francisco-based architecture firm. "Many of my clients assume that I know all about the software they're using," he says. "For instance, one client came to me after a large part of their contacts database had been lost."

"As it turns out, an intern had been entering information from business cards and checking email at the same time, toggling back and forth furiously," he says. Apparently, the calendar software saved every 10 minutes, but because the intern was creating so many new files, the regularly scheduled save was suspended because something was being added to the database. When the intern's computer froze, all was lost. "The company was not happy to learn that this isn't the sort of thing I can bring back," he recalls.

Paying the Price

What are your options if a computer dies with your precious data locked inside of it? Some businesses send a melted and marred machine out for possible data recovery. Technicians can take apart a disk drive and restore lost data one byte at a time, but only at a steep price.

"The people that really make out on backup problems are the disk recovery companies," says Codel. "Most charge $1,000 to $2,000 just to look at a dead hard drive. And there's no guarantee they can do anything for you." That's a high price to pay for a problem that could have been prevented.

Education Is Everything
Although it's vital for a system administrator to install remote backup software, it is just as important that your employees know how to use it. Companies should never assume that just because their employees know how to make spreadsheets on a PC they also know how to make backup copies of their files. Teaching new employees about the company's backup systems and reinforcing the idea that they must take responsibility for their own data is the best insurance against irretrievable losses.

Just as it has with almost everything else, the Internet is revolutionizing backup procedures. These days, you can back up your data onto an online sever from wherever you have Net access. It's fast, easy and usually free - and workers don't need a network administrator to help them.

Even so, the systems administrator from Chicago warns that when it comes to backup issues, good intentions aren't nearly enough. "We don't think about how human error or even unknowing misuse can interfere with our safety net," he observes. "It's a false sense of security — unless you're sure that employees know how to use backup procedures, and that they actually do use them."