Protect Your Data!

Last month I wrote about a dermatologist from the Midwest whose office was ransacked and then set on fire. I covered the steps necessary to file a timely and accurate insurance claim.

No amount of insurance, however, will recoup one of his worst losses: the data on his destroyed computers.

Industry statistics show that fully 10% of hard drives fail in any given year and that 43% of computer users lose one or more files every year. Recovery of lost data, when it's possible at all, can be very expensive.

Despite that, a Harris Interactive study found that 35% of Americans admitted they never back up their computers. My guess is that the actual percentage is substantially higher. And amazingly, many people who have lost important, irretrievable data in a crash still refuse to do regular backups.

Why do so many of us neglect such a basic precaution? Because it's an annoyance and an inconvenience and takes too much time. Clearly, the only way to get many people to back up their data regularly is to make the process automatic.

Some computer companies have taken steps in that direction. Apple, for example, has a feature called Time Machine that backs up Macs to an external drive automatically. But that does you no good if, as happened to the Midwestern dermatologist, the fire that destroys the computers also incinerates the backup drives.

So, the first rule is to store your backup drives in a different location from your computers. Unfortunately, that's a pain, too, and external drives can be lost or stolen, creating a HIPAA nightmare. So an increasingly popular alternative is automatic remote backup.

There are several companies that offer this service: two of the most popular are Mozy (www.mozy.comwww.carbonite.com

(As always, I have no financial interest in any product or service discussed in this column.)

The cost is very reasonable. In fact, Mozy lets you store up to two gigabytes of data for free. Its basic package, which includes unlimited storage, costs $4.95 a month per computer. Carbonite is a bit cheaper ($49.95 per year, also for unlimited capacity), but Mozy is a little more customizable, and you can specify the files you want regularly backed up and when it will be done. Backing up an entire office costs more, depending on how many computers and/or servers you have, but it's still very reasonable and includes other services such as operating system and network share support.

The procedure is simple: You create an account and tell the service which files you want copied. Your first backup can take a long time, often days, depending on how much data you are sending and the speed of your Internet connection. After that, the program runs in the background, copying only those files that have changed since the previous backup. Files are encrypted before leaving your computer, and they remain encrypted at the service's data center, making them HIPAA compliant and, theoretically, accessible only to you.

To restore files, you open a sort of virtual representation of your backed-up files and click on what you want restored. You also can log into the Web site from any other computer and pick any file or folder to retrieve. If your computer is stolen or the hard drive is destroyed, you can go to a site to initiate a full restore to a new computer.

If you ever decide to terminate the service or simply want a hard copy of your data, Mozy will send you a DVD of all your files, for a fee.

Mozy's parent company, EMC, has announced a new subsidiary called Decho www.decho.com

To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Eastern at [email protected]

Last month I wrote about a dermatologist from the Midwest whose office was ransacked and then set on fire. I covered the steps necessary to file a timely and accurate insurance claim.

No amount of insurance, however, will recoup one of his worst losses: the data on his destroyed computers.

Industry statistics show that fully 10% of hard drives fail in any given year and that 43% of computer users lose one or more files every year. Recovery of lost data, when it's possible at all, can be very expensive.

Despite that, a Harris Interactive study found that 35% of Americans admitted they never back up their computers. My guess is that the actual percentage is substantially higher. And amazingly, many people who have lost important, irretrievable data in a crash still refuse to do regular backups.

Why do so many of us neglect such a basic precaution? Because it's an annoyance and an inconvenience and takes too much time. Clearly, the only way to get many people to back up their data regularly is to make the process automatic.

Some computer companies have taken steps in that direction. Apple, for example, has a feature called Time Machine that backs up Macs to an external drive automatically. But that does you no good if, as happened to the Midwestern dermatologist, the fire that destroys the computers also incinerates the backup drives.

So, the first rule is to store your backup drives in a different location from your computers. Unfortunately, that's a pain, too, and external drives can be lost or stolen, creating a HIPAA nightmare. So an increasingly popular alternative is automatic remote backup.

There are several companies that offer this service: two of the most popular are Mozy (www.mozy.comwww.carbonite.com

(As always, I have no financial interest in any product or service discussed in this column.)

The cost is very reasonable. In fact, Mozy lets you store up to two gigabytes of data for free. Its basic package, which includes unlimited storage, costs $4.95 a month per computer. Carbonite is a bit cheaper ($49.95 per year, also for unlimited capacity), but Mozy is a little more customizable, and you can specify the files you want regularly backed up and when it will be done. Backing up an entire office costs more, depending on how many computers and/or servers you have, but it's still very reasonable and includes other services such as operating system and network share support.

The procedure is simple: You create an account and tell the service which files you want copied. Your first backup can take a long time, often days, depending on how much data you are sending and the speed of your Internet connection. After that, the program runs in the background, copying only those files that have changed since the previous backup. Files are encrypted before leaving your computer, and they remain encrypted at the service's data center, making them HIPAA compliant and, theoretically, accessible only to you.

To restore files, you open a sort of virtual representation of your backed-up files and click on what you want restored. You also can log into the Web site from any other computer and pick any file or folder to retrieve. If your computer is stolen or the hard drive is destroyed, you can go to a site to initiate a full restore to a new computer.

If you ever decide to terminate the service or simply want a hard copy of your data, Mozy will send you a DVD of all your files, for a fee.

Mozy's parent company, EMC, has announced a new subsidiary called Decho www.decho.com

To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Eastern at [email protected]

Last month I wrote about a dermatologist from the Midwest whose office was ransacked and then set on fire. I covered the steps necessary to file a timely and accurate insurance claim.

No amount of insurance, however, will recoup one of his worst losses: the data on his destroyed computers.

Industry statistics show that fully 10% of hard drives fail in any given year and that 43% of computer users lose one or more files every year. Recovery of lost data, when it's possible at all, can be very expensive.

Despite that, a Harris Interactive study found that 35% of Americans admitted they never back up their computers. My guess is that the actual percentage is substantially higher. And amazingly, many people who have lost important, irretrievable data in a crash still refuse to do regular backups.

Why do so many of us neglect such a basic precaution? Because it's an annoyance and an inconvenience and takes too much time. Clearly, the only way to get many people to back up their data regularly is to make the process automatic.

Some computer companies have taken steps in that direction. Apple, for example, has a feature called Time Machine that backs up Macs to an external drive automatically. But that does you no good if, as happened to the Midwestern dermatologist, the fire that destroys the computers also incinerates the backup drives.

So, the first rule is to store your backup drives in a different location from your computers. Unfortunately, that's a pain, too, and external drives can be lost or stolen, creating a HIPAA nightmare. So an increasingly popular alternative is automatic remote backup.

There are several companies that offer this service: two of the most popular are Mozy (www.mozy.comwww.carbonite.com

(As always, I have no financial interest in any product or service discussed in this column.)

The cost is very reasonable. In fact, Mozy lets you store up to two gigabytes of data for free. Its basic package, which includes unlimited storage, costs $4.95 a month per computer. Carbonite is a bit cheaper ($49.95 per year, also for unlimited capacity), but Mozy is a little more customizable, and you can specify the files you want regularly backed up and when it will be done. Backing up an entire office costs more, depending on how many computers and/or servers you have, but it's still very reasonable and includes other services such as operating system and network share support.

The procedure is simple: You create an account and tell the service which files you want copied. Your first backup can take a long time, often days, depending on how much data you are sending and the speed of your Internet connection. After that, the program runs in the background, copying only those files that have changed since the previous backup. Files are encrypted before leaving your computer, and they remain encrypted at the service's data center, making them HIPAA compliant and, theoretically, accessible only to you.

To restore files, you open a sort of virtual representation of your backed-up files and click on what you want restored. You also can log into the Web site from any other computer and pick any file or folder to retrieve. If your computer is stolen or the hard drive is destroyed, you can go to a site to initiate a full restore to a new computer.

If you ever decide to terminate the service or simply want a hard copy of your data, Mozy will send you a DVD of all your files, for a fee.

Mozy's parent company, EMC, has announced a new subsidiary called Decho www.decho.com

To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Eastern at [email protected]