WyzGuys Computer and Network Support

Losing your data to hardware failure, theft, fire, or natural disaster can have catastrophic consequences for you business.  Even losing pictures of your vacation or children, or music files can be problematic.  At WyzGuys, we work with our clients to set up a simple and effective back up system to protect them from data loss.

We also excel at data recovery.  If you have lost your password and can't log on to your computer, or the system become unbootable, or the hard drive become corrupt, usually we can access and recover your data with very little, if any, loss.

Then we establish a systematic backup procedure so this can never be a problem again.

Contact us today to schedule your data protection review today.

Data Backup Considerations

Regular data backup is the key to data protection.  In our experience, this is often neglected by businesses.  To be effective, a backup system should conform to the following standards:

• Performed Regularly - Whether this is daily, weekly, or monthly depends on your situation, but more frequently is almost always better than less.
• Verified - Backups that cannot be restored are worthless.  Backups need to be tested periodically for restorability.
• Moved Off-Site - If your backup remains on site, you have no data protection from fire, flood, storm, or other disasters that may happen to your office location.
• Redundant Backup Modes - If you are backing up your data more than one way, you have some additional protection against catastrophic loss.

We recommend hard drive to hard drive backup for our clients.  Tapes, CDs ad DVDs all have shelf life and physical compatibility issues that we choose to avoid by saving backup files to another hard drive.  This can be accomplished several ways. 

• USB Flash Drive - if your data store is small, say under 8 GB, your data can be saved to a flash drive.  Flash drives are extremely durable and portable, and your data can be moved from computer to computer with ease. 
  • Pros - portable, inexpensive, durable, simple to set up, easily moved off site at the end of the day.
  • Cons - easily lost, stolen, or mislaid, small storage limit.
• External Hard Drive - If your data store is larger, an external hard drive may provide a good solution.  This will provide a larger storage amount, and it is possible to back up several computers to one external hard drive, either by physically attaching it to each machine, or over a computer network.
  • Pros - more storage, easily moved off site
  • Cons - Easy to leave it on-site
• Additional Internal Hard Drives - Installing one or more additional hard drives in a computer provides several options.  Something as simple as separating the data files from the operating system and applications, can make data recovery easy if the operating system crashes or fails to boot.  Two hard drives also can be set up as "mirrors," or an exact copy,  so that if one hard drive fails, the other can take over.  In a server, three or more hard drives can be configured in a RAID array, which protects the data from the failure on any one hard drive.
  • Pros - Easy to implement
  • Can be a little more expensive in terms of hardware cost.  Not portable.  Cannot be taken off-site.
• On-Line Backup Services - This method ensures that the data is securely and automatically backed up to a remote location over an Internet connection.  This option is always part of our recommended solution for our clients.
  • Pros - Automatic. Data is always moved off-site.
  • Cons - Can be more expensive with monthly or annual service charges.

Data Backup Solutions

At WyzGuys, we utilize a redundant back up solution wherever possible.  We like to set up a combination of local backup with a comprehensive on-line data backup solution. 

The local backup component may be something as simple as setting up the different computers to back up to a central computer or server over the local area network  Or we may recommend Network Attached Storage device or external hard drive.

Remote On-Line Backup is accomplished with a software based back up solution to an FTP server that WyzHost, our Web Services company, leases and manages

Data Recovery Services

We are experienced data recovery experts.  We get involved with data recovery in situations where there has been hard drive failure, lost password, or when the operating system of a computer becomes unbootable.  Unfortunately, many times we get called in when there is no regular back up procedure in place, and the loss of the data would have unfortunate repercussions.

Recovery data from a failed drive or system sometimes requires special tools or software, and is not always completely effective, but we have had a good success rate with our clients.