Protecting the data on your office computers

Tech Talk. By Tom Savel, MD, amednews contributor. Sept. 10, 2001.

TECH TALK

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When it comes to data and your office PCs, it's really not a matter of if you will lose data, but when.

One way to keep this loss to a minimum is to use a product known as an uninterruptible power supply.

The UPS will provide a steady stream of power, regardless of any surges, dips or complete loss of power. The UPS is truly insurance for your PC system.

In addition to working with the PC itself, the UPS can also protect other pieces of equipment, such as printers, modems, fax machines and telephones.

There are a wide variety of UPSproducts on the market, ranging in price from $100 to more than $3,000. What differentiates one product from another is the number of items it can protect (known as the load), the number of outlets it has, its software (if included) and its battery life.

The average practice has between two and four PC systems, one or two printers and at least one fax machine. To be on the safe side, each PC system should have its own UPS.

You need to be sure that the UPS you buy can handle, at minimum, the load of one PC in a tower case and one 17-inch monitor.

Running completely on battery, you should have between five and 10 minutes of power. This time will allow you to stop the tasks you are working on and safely shut down. Of course, the higher-end UPS units will afford you much more than five to 10 minutes, but at a significant cost.

One of the industry leaders in the development of the UPS is American Power Conversion Corp. APC has won many awards for its products, and it has a vast product line. In addition to offering a two-year warranty, APC will replace equipment, up to a value of $25,000, if it is damaged while using APC products.

One of APC's products, the Back-UPS PRO 500, is well-suited to physician practices. The PRO 500 affords eight to 20 minutes of run time (depending on the specific load) and has seven power outlets, telephone protection and USB connectivity.

In addition, it includes software, for both Macs and PCs, that allows for automatic file saving and shutdown. At a cost of less than $200, it is reasonably priced.

For those who would like even longer run times, APC recommends the Back-UPS Pro 650 for those critical office computers. For offices with larger servers and networks, APC recommends using the Smart UPS 620 Net.

In addition to hardware products, APC also provides a useful service, APC Online Backup Service. As APC explains, "it is an advanced and reliable alternative to backing up data with disk and tape drives. Using your Internet connection, your important files are encrypted and transmitted to an off-site location."

At the present time, APC is offering one year of free service to those who need only 10 megabytes of space. For those who need more, APC offers a free 90-day trial for up to 100 megabytes of space.

You can find out more information about this service at the company's Web site (http://apc.backup.com/).

A study by IBM demonstrated that during a one-month period, a standard PC experiences about 120 power disturbances. For this study, a disturbance could be a brownout, blackout, spike, dip, etc.

Given these data and the critical information that is viewed every day on PCs in health care offices, a UPS is clearly a wise investment.

Dr. Savel is president and co-founder of Cedar Cove Technologies, a clinical software development company. He can be reached by email (tsavel@cedarcovetech.com)