Avoid these mistakes when archiving your own hard drives.

Data archiving with hard drives can be a tricky thing and you or your business may already be making some mistakes that you’re not even aware of. Don’t allow yourself to be duped if a disgruntled employee steals important files or an unforeseen event like a fire or flood sweeps away all your precious historic family photos. Protect yourself and your hard drive data by avoiding these five mistakes.

Not double checking backups.

So you made backups of all your data. Great! Now have you double checked them to make sure they work? If you’re not doing this, you could very well pay for it in the near future. Whether you choose to back your data up with cloud-based hosted storage or backup all your images on CDs and DVDs, make sure to check them all for possible data corruption. Having bad backups is just as unfortunate as not having any backups for your hard drives at all. Which brings us to our next point …

Not keeping ANY backups.

If the need ever arises for your business to access old data (which it probably will), it’s necessary to keep backups in hard drives or a different media form that can be easily accessed. A financial reporting audit would be an example of time when it would be extremely beneficial to just pull any information that’s needed quickly. Not only does it make the audit easier for everyone but it also proves that your business takes organized archiving seriously.

Only storing data from hard drives in one place.

Storing all your hard drives in one place is a surefire way to lose everything if a natural disaster occurs. Choosing an additional secure, off-site location to store data is a wise decision and ensures that even if you can’t access your data at the office, you still have it safely stored somewhere else.

Refusing to hold onto out of date hardware.

Although it may take up additional space at home or in the office, it’s smart to hold on to out of date hardware – at least for a few years. That way, in the occurrence that you need to pull important data old data off one of your hard drives or an older medium, you’ll be able to access it, even if your up-to-date hardware won’t read it.

Not informing your co-workers or employees of your intentions. 

Making sure everyone in the office understands why you want to hold onto out of date hardware and old hard drives saves you from someone accidentally throwing them away during a spring cleaning binge. Additionally, if everyone is on the same page, the organized archiving can be a team effort instead of just a one person job.

Have any other tips for data archiving with hard drives? Leave a comment and share the knowledge!