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TECHNOLOGY
There Is No Such Thing as Too Much Backup
Or so I thought before I met the Medical Missionaries of Mary
For more than thirty years, my business was supporting computer systems for small businesses. I did it all: programming, troubleshooting, installation, repairs, upgrades, and anything else my customers needed. One thing I learned very early is that computer system data needs to be backed up.
This was especially true in the early days. Hardware was not as reliable as it is today. For example, with a customer base of about two hundred, with each averaging two or three critical computer servers, I expected that I would be summoned for at least one hard drive failure every month. If the unfortunate customer didn’t have reliable backup, their business could be seriously damaged.
Backup software and hardware were notoriously unreliable too. Many well-advertised systems would produce lovely reports showing how many files they had backed up and supposedly kept safe. Some customers were very impressed by those reports, at least until the day came where we needed to bring back that data after a crash. That’s when some of these systems failed miserably.
Because of these very real dangers, I was a crusader for regular backups and regular tests to ensure that systems…
