There’s no single backup interval that suits every work computer. The right one depends on how much recent work your office could stand to redo, and on whether your backups are actually finishing.
How much recent work could you recreate?
Start with the work that changes every day. In a contracting office, that’s the estimate still being priced, the invoice the bookkeeper has open, and the change order nobody will remember once the call ends. A measurement from the roof, a supplier price from a text or a note from the walkthrough is hard to rebuild when the file was the only copy.
Write down how much estimating or invoicing your office could stand to recreate, and match the backup schedule to that. IT people call this your recovery point objective, or RPO: how much recent work you can lose before the loss is too much.
Then list the files on that computer, like the bid workbook, the invoice spreadsheet and the job photos folder, and note who would have to rebuild each one and what they’d need. The estimator may remember the rooms and still miss a quantity. The bookkeeper may remember the customer and still miss a line typed after the last backup.
For the bigger picture, see our guide to data backup for contractors.
A scheduled backup isn’t a finished one
A backup that was supposed to run and a copy your office can actually restore are two different things, and the gap between them usually comes from ordinary days. The estimator closes the laptop between stops, it goes to sleep, and the backup doesn’t run when it was scheduled. The office desktop does the same after the crew goes home. A portable backup drive that rode to a job in the truck isn’t plugged in at the desk, and nothing can be copied to a drive that isn’t connected.
A silent failure is a different miss. The backup starts, something stops it, and nobody is told. People keep estimating and invoicing, so everything on screen looks current, but the last completed copy hasn’t moved. An invoice can show the new total while the backup still holds the old one.
Where the lost work comes from
Scheduled
When the backup was supposed to run.Completed
When a run actually finished.Last protected version
The newest copy that’s actually protected.Lost work
Everything created after that copy, up to the failure or until someone notices.
Write down the schedule for each computer
Once you know how much work a computer could lose, you can answer “how often should you back up your computer?” for that machine and write it down. Files move at different speeds, even on the same computer. Closed job photos from a finished walkthrough sit still once the crew is off the site, so a wide interval may be enough. A busy estimate file picks up new quantities and prices every time someone works the bid, so it needs a short one.
Name the computer on the sheet, whether it’s the office desktop or the laptop that rides in the truck, then list the estimate files, invoices and job photos on it. If the estimator and the bookkeeper share that machine, each adds lines the other may never see.
One sheet per work computer
- Computer and filesWhich work computer, and which files on it
- Blank, to fill in
- Work you could recreateHow much recent estimating or invoicing the office could redo
- Blank, to fill in
- Chosen intervalThe schedule that matches that loss
- Blank, to fill in
- Last protected versionDate and time of the newest completed, usable copy
- Blank, to fill in
- Gaps to checkComputer asleep or offline, or an upload that didn’t finish
- Blank, to fill in
- ScopeWork files only, or a separately scoped full-computer image
- Blank, to fill in
How long old versions are kept is a separate question, covered in backup retention. And backup testing is how you later check that a restored file actually opens.
Where Ghostworx fits
Ghostworx backs up the business data listed in your coverage plan, usually business email and OneDrive or Google Drive files, and your quote states how often those backups run. Files stored only on a computer aren’t part of the standard backup, and neither is a complete image of a computer. So an estimate saved to a covered OneDrive or Google Drive folder is backed up, but one saved only on the laptop isn’t. Backup for computer files can be set up separately, scoped and quoted first. The full list is on our security and backup page.