Why Backups Are Important

Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing information for an account worth $38 billion.

That's what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents' biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

Read the whole story here.

Don't think this cannot happen in a dental office. OOPS! is one of the big reasons for loss of data. Tape backups are unreliable. Having a good backup and restore plan in place is absolutely necessary. Loss of data is not covered under an insurance policy and can cost your office lots of money.