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***
Backup your Data Revisited ***
I think it has been over a year since my last newsletter devoted to backing up your data.
What happens if your computer stops working?
You lose all your data and you have to start from the beginning again.
Therefore, you need to backup your data.
We don't have and I could not easily find data on this, so I can only use anecdotal information on computer crashes.
In the olden days (10 years ago), hard drive crashes were quite common. Now, hard drives are really good and the chances of a major hard drive crash our fairly low. I can only guess, based on experience, that you have a 20% chance of losing your data due to a hard drive crash over a period of 4 years. I can only guess that when it happens to you, you will remember this newsletter!!!
From experience, we estimate that only 5% of our customers (or any computer users) make backup copies of their data on a daily basis.
That is just plain horrible.
You need to back up your data each and every day. At a minimum, you should back up your Cash Register Express data daily (especially the c:\cre2000\data2000\cre2000.mdb file which has all of your data in it).
At Budget POS, we back all of our data on our main server to a secondary server on a daily basis. The data is sent from the secondary server to another PC also on a daily basis. .The data on this third PC is transferred to an external hard drive and to a portable hard drive on a daily basis. At the end of the day, we walk out with a copy of all of our data and we have 3 extra copies of our data sitting on three separate computers.
We are really crazy about our backup system and perhaps it is overkill. We have not had a hard disk crash in at least 10 years. We replace any significant computer that is more than 4 years old.
So, we estimate that 95% of computers owners DO NOT make daily backups. You really need to start.
We recommend that you purchase a Maxtor USB 2.0 Hard Drive. You need to make sure that your computer supports USB 2.0. If you purchased a computer in the past 2 years or so, you probably have a USB 2.0 connection. You can install your Maxtor External USB 2.0 Hard Drive in about 5 minutes. A daily backup of your CRE2000 folder with directories should take less than 5 minutes. The cost of a Maxtor USB 2.0 Hard Drive with 160 GB of hard drive space is less than $200. It is just superfast.
Now, you don't need a Maxtor USB 2.0 Hard Drive. That is what we are currently using. It's great, but if you have something you like better, use it. Just make your backups.
If you don't know how to do it, hire a local computer consultant or find someone like a high school or college student that is good with this kind of "stuff." It is just important that you make sure that you have a daily back.
You can also purchase one of those USB 2.0 Memory Keys from Staples, Office Depot, CompUSA or other source. These are very small memory devices that can hold 256 MB or up to 1 GB of data. You can compress your data file and make a copy of your data nad bring it home with you. A 256 MB Memory Key that fits in your pocket sells for about $59.
I don't want to get too technical here. No matter what, you need to make sure that you make a daily backup of your data. You can devise your own backup system or just use the option within CRE to backup your data. JUST DO IT!!!
While you are out it, you should check out our latest recommendations. If you have a server, it should have 512 MB of RAM. All work stations should have 256 MB of RAM. If you are using something other than Windows XP, Windows NT or Windows 2000, you are 10 times more likely to have a problem (according to Microsoft). So, if you are still using Windows 95, 98 or ME, you may want to consider a change.