It's absolutely critical that you backup your files. This is one of the most important things to do to protect your business and it would be virtually impossible to re-create your lost files. Although we can sound like a broken record on the topic, we unfortunatley see cases where files aren't backed up, and data is lost, due to a hard drive crash, system loss, human error, or other disaster.
We are often asked, "What is the best way to back up data?". There isn't a single "one-size-fits-all" answer, but there are some key things to know.
In a traditional file based backup system, you pick and choose the files that you want to include in your backup. This works well if you know exactly what files are your critical files to backup.
Taking it one step further, we strongly advise using an automated backup process, and ensuring that the backup is stored off site, preferably far away from your business. For this reason, our typical recommendation is managed on-line backup. The backup is automatic, data is stored far away from your business, and the backup is monitored for integrity so we know that the backup is up to date.
The problem with file based backup is that it's possible to miss important business information in the backup. For example, if you install a new program, you may not know that the data is stored in "Program Files" or some other place on your hard drive. This may mean that that backup is missed. You can always pick and choose what files to backup, but the risk is that you may not know where they are. After all these years, Microsoft has finally put the Outlook email files in "My Documents". Typically people know to backup "My Documents", but in previous versions of Outlook the email files were actually buried in hidden folders, and often backup was overlooked as a result. Many other pieces of critical information can be missed this way.
This is why we often recommend image-based backup, where the ENTIRE hard drive is imaged an everything is captured. The advantage is that you can't miss a file (everything is included), AND if you need to restore to new hardware because of a hardware failure or upgrade, the process will be a LOT faster becuase individual programs won't need to be installed one-by one.
Thinking through your own business backup strategy, the cost of all the options will need to be considered. The ideal scenario is an image-based, automatic, managed, off-site backup, but the cost of storing ALL your hard drive contents may be too much. We ask folks to weigh the cost of down time compared to the cost of storage to make a decision. If you decide to do a file based backup, then put a note on your calendar to make sure you periodially check for new programs and the location of the stored data.