Hi folks,
Ive got several clients that run small tax businesses’ from their SOHO both use win 7 HP as their primary os. They use different professional preparing packages and Im amazed that none of these programs do autobackups of client data.
These packages keep their data internally, typically in a users folder within the primary folder. Its a data base format, and not easily readable using a text editor, although its not encrypted.
All 3 tax accounting software packages Ive encountered allow for manual backups to an external drive, but in all 3 cases, these are users and not techies at all, and even though Ive shown them how to do a nightly manual backup, they typically forget and don’t do it so the backup of their business data falls to me.
Im now in charge of safeguarding data for all 3 clients, and they trust me. Ive got to preserve my reputation in this community by designing a backup strategy that works and is quick to restore if (heaven forbid) a crash happens on their primary machines.
Ive thought about NAS but until the apps do a scheduled autobackup, that isn’t an option, and it doesn’t look like that will happen soon. All 3 vendors say that to do a backup, its a nightly manual effort that’s required to be done by the user. Ive put two clients on Macrium imaging every 2 weeks during tax season, both feeding an external 2 TB drive; that will capture at least the majority of the data if something crashes and I need to do a total reload, however anything within that 2 week period would be gone. I can change it to weekly image or investigate if Macrium has an incremental feature for daily backups using the last image (Im using free version of Macrium, and have used TrueImage too, but Macrium seems to do the same thing without the cost of always having to upgrade Acronis for every OS version we encounter when new hardware is purchased every 3-4 years or so)
Another is a new client that is using MSbackup. Their previous IT guy told them that a restore of the root folder of the app will restore the program and all the data. I don’t think that’s how restore works, and I don’t think that a restore will indeed restore the app to working condition on a new hard drive. (how would it restore any registry entries? Or does it?) Im the client’s new IT guy because the old one is no longer doing business (retired). BTW, no IT work has been done at this client for the last 2 years, his external drive is a 500G and the backups were failing because the drive was full, so Ive got to find a solution quickly. I just purchased a 3TB dirve for this guy and plan to implement on it whatever solution we come up with here.)
Im not even vaguely familiar with ms backup. Can anyone refute or agree with the last IT guy’s claims? If they don’t hold water, do you have suggestions as to how I can keep these clients safe every night? Tax season is mostly form Jan 1 till April 30 so I only need to do daily work for 5 months, and then can go in and clean up the old images, etc and keep only the most current one.
Thanks very much for your assistance and opinions.
