Modern technology gives us many things.

Survey shows businesses making the wrong data storage choices

buffaloproduoWith World Back-Up Day coming up on March 31, an alarming survey has revealed many small to medium business are putting themselves at risk by choosing the wrong storage device.

Commissioned by Buffalo, the Growing Business survey interviewed more than 500 small and medium sized businesses about how they managed their data.

With 90 per cent recognising the effect of lost data, they revealed 62 per cent used external hard drives as their back ups with another 45 per cent using USB flash drives and CD media.

But only 10 per cent of businesses said they used NAS (network attached storage) which is more robust, able to be scaled up and with a built in back up to your data.

While saving to an external hard drive backs up your files off your computer, if that single external device fails you will be unable to retrieve your data.

A NAS set-up has a built-in redundancy – which means it creates a back up for the back up so you’ll never lose data.

“While tech savvy businesses owners get it, there remains a huge number of business owners who don’t know where to start when it comes to choosing a storage solution for their business so they simply go with what they know from their consumer experience of storing photos, music and movies,’’ says Boris Shen, National Business Manager, Buffalo Australia.

A Buffalo LinkStation NAS storage device

“External desktop and portable hard drives are fine for casual purposes, but they don’t offer any redundancy function on their own.

“Worse still, USB sticks and CDs are easily lost and are prone to damage which will corrupt the stored data.

“Above all, none of these solutions are suitable for daily backups of large amounts of business data which should even be automated if possible so you never forget.”

One factor that deters some business away from a NAS set-up is the misconception that they are hard to set up and manage.

“NAS devices have come a long way in the last couple of years alone,” Mr Shen says.

“The technology has become easier to use and prices have come down significantly.

“There is now a raft of solutions available which offer small businesses some of the enterprise-grade benefits that larger businesses have long enjoyed from as little as $500 – a very small price to pay for keeping business data safe, secure and always at your fingertips.”

The other advantage of having a NAS solution is the fact the data is accessible on your home or office network to give approved users easy access to the contents.

To assist small and medium businesses make the right choices when it comes to storage, Buffalo has created a list of questions that will bring the users to the product that’s right for them.

* How much storage space do I need?

* Will I be able to set it up and manage it myself?

* Do I want to share information between staff members?

* Do I want to be able to access data when I’m away from the office?

* Do I want to be able to access data from smartphones and tablets?

* What security features do I need?

* How quickly do I want to be able to transfer data?

* Can I also backup data to the cloud?

* What would happen to my data in the event of a blackout?

* How much can I afford to spend?

World Back-Up Day is March 31 and is a day designated to make people aware of the need to back up our data.

www.worldbackupday.com

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