Why it is important to log off or close an application program before shutting down your computer

Recently, we had a client call us in a panic stating “all of my project files are gone”. It appeared that all the project files they were working on, some as old as two years, went “missing”. Upon further investigation we found that all of these files, close to 200, were still on the server, but they were corrupted. Since they were corrupted, the files could not be seen by the program.

We did a complete file restore from their 5+2 backup System, that we created, and all files were recovered. (One of the major reasons to have a data backup is the “oops factor”)

Now, how were the files corrupted? A file can be corrupted in many ways but we will look at just a few of them.

1- Not logging off properly from a program – for instance, when shutting down a computer at night, you lose patience and select, “don’t wait for the program to close just shutdown”. Programs have their own way of closing and if you “shutdown” before they close – that action could corrupt the database as they may have been writing to the files when you forced a shutdown.

2 -Power Bump. If you do not a small UPS on your desktop computer, a small glitch in power could cause a hard drive to become corrupted if it was writing to the program when the power was interrupted. That is one of the reasons we recommend accounting software users have a small UPS installed on their desktop computer to prevent power bumps from possibly corrupting files.

3 – Failing Hard Drive. Hardware issues can corrupt files. The problem here is that you may not be aware that the hard drive is failing. Switching to solid state drives helps eliminate the mechanical hard drive issues.

Data corruption does happen so it only makes sense to make multiple day / monthly backups. Our 5+2 (5 day plus 2 months) rolling back up system saved the day in this case.  With the cost of storage being so low, there is no reason why  you cannot afford to protect your business.

Contact us or call 1 800 263 8433. We can set up a data backup and recovery  system to protect your business.