Chris Bjorklund: You’re listening to the AllBusiness podcast. If you’re getting this through iTunes and RSS feed or an online streaming-media player, you can hear interviews with other experts at AllBusiness.com.

Bjorklund: The best way to avoid a catastrophic loss of computer data is by doing backup faithful. John Christopher from DriveSavers tells Paul Kilduff from AllBusiness why backup is so critical

John Christopher: And that means, of course, making an identical copy of your critical files, your critical information, stuff that you need to protect to keep your business going to another piece of computer media and taking it away from your main computer system because if you leave it next to your computer, anything can happen to it. There could be some catastrophic flood, fire, or even just a sprinkler, that a pipe that might bust in your living room and start flooding things. So you want to take your backups away from your computer system. That’s step #1. Probably step #2 which really would precede step #1 would almost be to get rid of some of the files and things that you might not need on your hard drive everyday and that’s really more about archiving your information. And what you want to do is archive old data, make duplicate sets and get those away from your computer system, lock them up perhaps in the bank, in a safe deposit box or send them to your family members in other states, anywhere away from your computer system where that information can be safe.

Paul Kilduff: And you put them on CDs? Is that what you’re suggesting or…

Christopher: Well, that opens the door to another question which is, what do I back up to? Because there are all kinds of different types of storage available for backing up now and most of it is fairly low cost. You can back up from everything from a small keychain-style USB flashdrive to a CD ROM, DVDs, all the way up to high-end raid systems or tape drives or what have you. Most of the time though, take a look in your computer system and the drive you have built in, the CD or DVD drive is what I’m talking about. It might work and suffice to back up the amount of information you already have. It’s all about capacity. For instance, a DVD disk can hold about 4 gigabytes of information, 4 gigabytes of critical files and you want to be able to rewrite that information to your disk everyday as a daily backup. So what you want to use will be something like a DVD RW, a rewritable disk. If you’ve got more than say 4 gigabytes, you’d have to either spread it over multiple disks or you can invest in a portable hard disk drive which you could again, take away from your office location or lock up in a fire safe, at the very least, it’s again all about how much capacity you’re going to need to back up your files.

Kilduff: And you’re suggesting that we back up stuff everyday?

Christopher: Absolutely. There are even programs that you can purchase, backup software programs that will automatically back up your data for you at a predetermined time. These are wonderful because you don’t have to worry about the backup as long you have the device connected and ready, it will back up at a predetermined time. Some folks who have lots of data that they use everyday, perhaps will back up more than one time a day and back up to multiple devices, different types of drives. And that also can be very, very convenient to have the automated software running but don’t always rely on that. You should always check that to make sure. Check your backups and make sure that you are indeed backing up the data and that the device is working properly.

Bjorklund: John Christopher is a senior data recovery engineer with DriveSavers.com. Thanks for listening to this AllBusiness podcast.