In a previous life, well just last year actually, I worked in the corporate world of data storage, back up and recovery. We sold hardware and some software to companies to ensure that all their data was always backed up in case of emergency. This would enable them to ensure that they could operate 24 x 7 and could recover after any unforeseen events in as short as time as possible.
So like you and I and all of the large companies out there, we all take a back up every now and then and assume all our most valuable data is protected and that we can get whatever it is that we want back at the click of a button. WRONG!
Just last weekend I was prompted to do a software upgrade on my i-Pad. I had already upgrade to the new all singing and dancing IOS v7.0 and seemed quite happy with it. However, when I turned the unit on it asked me to upgrade to IOS v7.0.2 as there were some upgrades to do with security issues. Ah, this is from Apple I thought, everything will be fine. WRONG again. I performed the upgrade as directed and after a few minutes I got the symbol on my i-Pad to connect to i-Tunes. When I did this it told me there had been an error and the only way to get my i-Pad back back to life was to do a complete factory re-build.
I investigated this and put a support call into Apple, they were very friendly and called me back hourly to ensure the re-build was going to plan, but the one thing the system and they kept telling me was that all data would be lost. I was upset at this as my photo’s were going to be gone forever.
The people at Apple said not to worry you have backed up to i-Cloud. PHEW, what a relief they could see my camera stream and a back up had been performed about a week ago. So on we go with the update/upgrade/re-build whatever you want to call it.
After what seemed like an age the i-pad came back to life and performed all its checks. Then it prompted me to do a restore from i-Cloud, which I did. The moment of truth and my pictures from the day of the back up were there! Unfortunately they were the only pictures that were there, the day of the back up all 3 of them! All the other images that have been stored on my i-Pad for the last 18 months have gone forever it would seem. i-Cloud has no record of them and I do not have them stored anywhere else.
Now before you shed a tear for me, fortunately I do not use my i-Pad as a camera that much so yes, some nice pictures have been lost but not everything. The rest of the data that was stored on i-Tunes or in the ‘cloud’ is there and I seem to be OK.
But the moral of the story is that if you back up your website, your laptop and other electronic devices please verify that what you think you have backed up is actually there as loss of your data could end up with a lot higher consequences for your business than just a few missing photo’s.
If you are unsure please contact Navitas Design to discuss how we can host, back up and verify all your websites data.
Joff Cheney