Do you know what day it is for your back up?

It shouldn’t be like pulling teeth to do a backup.  Nobody wants to get their teeth pulled out, it hurts!  So why is making a daily backup like pulling teeth in most offices?  As kids my mom tried to help us remember to do daily things like brushing and flossing by having us mark a calendar with cute stickers we could earn when we had done it.  We could have stickers for every day, MTWTFSS.  It just took some follow-up and a bit of time to make it a habit.  Well, now that you are all grown up I want you to consider MTWTFSS backups. I know, you are probably wondering why anyone would compare brushing and flossing to backups, but I’m going to tell you why… both should be done daily or the long term consequences are costly, bad, and you could lose it all.  Do you know what day it is? Do you know where your back up is?

At Genius, we know you can have a bad hair day, a bad computer day, or heck, even a catastrophic computer day.  Sometimes hard drives just die, sometimes viruses catch hold, sometimes power spikes occur, sometimes even hurricanes and tornados are actually out to get you.  These items, though annoying and disruptive to your daily business, should never mean an end or a permanent re-do for your business.  If you are properly prepared they should be only a bump in your business road.   With all of your information becoming data in your computer, from practice management and billing to EHR’s with patient histories and treatments, your data is your entire office and life (not to mention the lives of all your patients).  Your data needs to be maintained and protected at least as well as your money, and care for at least as well as your teeth.

Now, I don’t just want you to back up every day to one stick, disc, or drive (yes, I know, you only have one toothbrush).  I want you to back up to a different stick, disc, or drive every day.  You should have a stick for MTWTFS & S (and no, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to mark them MTWTFSS either).  This will give you 5, 6, or 7 (depending upon how many days you work data at your office) complete backups (YES, this is important!).

I can hear your hands raising over in the office there and I will do my best to answer all of your questions:

“But Miss Penny, I back up to my stick (or disc) everyday and my hardware person backs up the server off site every weekend, isn’t that enough?”

NO.  Again, use a different stick every day, but bonus points for bringing up the “off site” back up.  You should keep or send at least one copy of data off site at all times.

“Isn’t having data in my purse, at home, or elsewhere dangerous?”

YES, it can be.  That is why my hardware boys will tell you that you should ALWAYS encrypt your data to keep the information safe from prying or accidental eyes.  Again, this is both your life and your patients’ lives we are talking about.  But if anything happens to your office (flood, tornado, power spike – these have all happened to clients before) and you do have a good offsite back up, all you need is a computer, a place to plug it in, and us.  We can get you up and going ASAP.

“5, 6, or 7 complete data backups?  Really, isn’t that a bit of overkill?”

YES and definitely NO.  I will now give you my favorite A-Team quote from Hannibal Smith, “Overkill is highly underrated.”

This is an important point, so let us chat for a minute.  What if your stick or disc was bad and you didn’t know it?  What if there was a glitch with the data transfer and your back up is bad?  What if you thought you were backing up your data, but nothing actually happened?  What if you had a piece of corrupt data in one of your databases?  Or perhaps you picked up a virus you didn’t know about?  Any one or two or even three sets of data could be garbage, the more backups you have, the more options we have for helping you to recover your data.  What kind of odds can you and your patients live with?  It’s all about the options; give yourself plenty.

“With all of these backups do I really need to back up before I run autoupdate as well?”

YES, definitely back up before you do an autoupdate.

“I’ve backed up before an autoupdate and then the autoupdate didn’t seem to go to well, should I back up again to be sure?”

NO.  In this case your “before” back up is your backup and defense against what I call “the world of hinky mishaps”.  If you don’t think your autoupdate went well, or you got some sort of warning or error message- stop, drop, and roll.  Next you will call us here at Genius and practically the first words out of our mouth will be “did you back up before you updated?”  After you say “yes”, there will be smiles all around.

“How do I know if my back up is good?  You said ‘hinky’ things can happen?”

I’m glad you asked.  That is using your back up smarts.
  
Once a year, we recommend that you send one of your back ups in to us, so that we can check and make sure that you are actually backing up good data that can be used if you need it.  For this I must stress… encrypt your data and call first so we know you are sending data to us.  Someone will fill out a nice work order for you to sign, authorizing us to look at the data for you.  It will also let us know to look for the data, so that we can track it and get back to you about it.

“How about backing up to the ‘cloud’ (internet) or how about to a portable hard drive?”

In addition to your daily stick/thumbdrive backups you would like to back up to the cloud or an extra hard drive?  YES.  Grasshopper, you are becoming a wise and scholarly pupil.  I am so proud of you, after all “Overkill is highly underrated.”

Isn’t saving your data at least as important as saving your teeth? 

• Backups are security
• Backups are options
• Backups are the marrow of your office life
• Do you know what day it is for your backup