Data protection is something the firm takes very seriously. I thought it might be helpful to go over how we back up our data and what is available for restoration:
Google:
For Gmail and Google Drive, we have the ability to restore deleted data for up to 25 days. After that, the information is gone forever. Restoring data is not particularly easy. We cannot restore specific items, but have to restore everything back to a certain date. So this is not something you want to use routinely.
I strongly recommend that when you delete something from Drive or Gmail, that you simply let it sit in your trash. Do not empty your trash. After 30 days, those files or emails will go away on their own. You don't have to worry about having too much trash, especially now that we have no space limits in Gmail or Drive. Letting your deleted data sit in trash for 30 days, gives you the time to realize you might have needed something, or deleted more than you thought (such as deleting an entire conversation rather than a single email). Trash gives you the time to recover that data quickly and easily.
Beyond trash and the 25 day Administrator recovery, our Google mail is backed up to Google Vault. We have the ability to recover messages sent or received, but there is no easy way to restore messages to your inbox. We can print out a few PDF files of emails if needed for something. It is not designed to recover large amounts of data easily. In a real emergency we can use third party tools to do it, though you probably do not want to be the test case for something like this.
File Servers:
Most of our offices have a local file server where we store documents and other important data. Different offices use different network letters for this, but I'm talking about our Matter Directories (MDIR) - the M: drive in most offices, as well as your personal network drive, the H: or I: drive in most offices.
We back up the file servers using a dedicated backup server built by a company called Datto. Some offices use a Sirus class backup, others use an Alto class. It mostly depends on the amount of data being stored. Either way, both systems back up changes to the file server every hour during the work day. After a couple of days, those hourly changes are merged into a single file that keeps one set of changes for the whole day. After a few days, those daily files get merged into a single weekly file and then eventually into a monthly file. The exact number of days before a merge and the number of months that we keep on file vary from office to office. The variation is mostly a matter of how much space we have on the backup server. If we have more space, we can keep more backups.
If necessary, we can recover specific files that may have been deleted. We only need to know the names of the files, the folders where they had been stored, and when they were deleted. Something deleted and created between backups may not be available. For example, if you want a file from a week or two ago, we only have weekly backups. In that case, if you created a file on Tuesday, and deleted it on Wednesday, it may not be available on the weekly backup, which only shows changes from the way the server looked on Sunday compared to the previous Sunday.
In the event the entire file server crashed and died, we have the ability to do a complete restore from backup to a new file server to get everything up and running again. We also have the ability in some of our larger offices to run the backup as a replacement file server while the main one is being repaired. We had to implement this very procedure in Philadelphia recently after the system board died in the main file server there.
We store backup files on site for quick restoration if needed. We also upload a copy of these files to cloud storage, in the unlikely event that an entire office is destroyed, taking out both the file server and the local backup. Again, how long we keep backups varies by office, depending on how much available space we have. However, nothing is available more than one year after deletion.
Two of our offices do not have file servers. Our Hollidaysburg and Beaver offices are deemed too small to have a file server on site. Rather we use a shared workstation drive in those offices. The matter directories in those offices get backed up nightly to a server in Philadelphia, which in turn feeds into the backup system in that office.
Time Entry
Time entry data is backed up using the same system we use for file servers. Our Elite servers in Philadelphia record all time entries in real time. These are backed up hourly during the day, less so on nights and weekends. In the event of a server failure, we could do a backup, but would lose any entries done since the last hourly backup. As with the file servers, the time entry backup servers are also backed up to the cloud in the event of a site disaster.
Individual Computers
I want to stress also that we do not back up in any way, the data stored on your individual laptops or desktop PCs. You should not keep items in your "My Documents" folder or anywhere else on the C: drive if you care about losing them. If your local hard drive fails, all that data could be irretrievably lost.
If, for some reason, you cannot store the information on your H: drive, storing it in your Google Drive is probably the best place to keep items you are concerned about losing.
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