Have you ever watched the one of those computer shows on TV? You know, those shows where several geeky (but photogenic) young guys and gals try and show just how geeky and smart they are by showing you things that can get you into situations that mess up your computer?

Sure, it looks like they know what they are doing but are you sure you want to follow their lead? They make editing the Windows Registry look easy. And of course they always provide a disclaimer, something like:

This has been tested on every version of Windows from 95 to XP and therefore should be safe, although we do not accept any responsibility for system problems or data loss.

Get that? They will not accept any responsibility for system problems or data loss! You are on your own baby! Have they really tested on every possible system configuration and combination? Of course not, nobody can. There are too many variables.

More to the point – do you have a good backup of your system? I mean everything! What would you do if you did get excited about their latest registry hack and messed something up? Could you recover your system without spending an entire weekend putting things back together and hoping you did not lose something? You might get by with a registry restore but do you really want to count on that? I didn’t think so.

So how do you make sure you have everything backed up in case you want to try The Latest Hack? Let’s examine the options.

First, you could use that spiffy DVD-RW drive your shiny new computer came with. It seems easy enough just drag and drop the files over there. One problem though, it’s not big enough to backup the entire hard drive – particularly if you got one of those multi-gigabyte monsters. So now we have to use multiple disks. Starting to get complicated isn’t it? And how would we go about restoring everything from those multiple disks? The operating system would need to be reinstalled at the very least and then how would we get everything back the way it was? Registry hacks or restores anyone? Hmm, this option is looking like an entire weekend project, maybe there is something else.

I know, they mentioned something about this cool program called Ghost. It will make an image file of the entire hard drive that you can just restore to a blank drive if you have a problem. That looks good! Wait a minute; it does compress but only by 2:1 at best (actually Symantec’s site states 56% for their latest version). That means that your 60 Gigabytes of hard drive will compress to a little less than 30 Gigabytes. Where do you put that? On the 4.7 GB DVD-RAM disks? Well, you still need multiple disks, and that’s going to be messy. I guess you could have a second hard drive to store the image file, that would work but who wants to have a drive they can’t use for storing more stuff?

Maybe we could use something old-fashioned like a tape drive. There are plenty still on the market and some are big enough to backup the entire hard drive and then some! You would still need to reinstall the base operating system and the tape software before you restore but that might not be too bad.

Not so fast! You say you have several computers on your company network? Do you need a tape drive for each of them? Well with a portable tape drive you could back up each of them in turn on separate nights. Man, it’s getting complicated again!

Perhaps it’s time to look into getting a server. Servers are not for playing games, there are good reasons to have vital company data stored in a central location where it is secure, backed up, and safe from registry hackers (and your brother-in-law). Putting all your valuable data on the server and keeping just the operating system and programs on the workstations might just be the best solution. And, if you put enough capacity on that server, you can store those Ghost images of the workstations as well just in case you cannot keep your brother-in-law from playing around.

Let the viewer beware, what might be fun and even useful on your home machine may cause much grief and loss of business if tried on the office computer. Better yet, invest in some protection and don’t let those kids lead you down the wrong path!

For more information on this and other serious business computer topics, please contact Steve Smith at 314-361-3505 x222 or via e-mail: ssmith@mis-corp.com.