Data is the lifeblood of many modern businesses and there is little doubt that in the event of catastrophic data loss, for a business without adequate data protection measures in place, the consequences could be commercially fatal. Data corruption can arise in many ways. With data increasingly distributed around organisations in office applications on PCs and laptops, there is a growing recognition that the humble PC registry can be of significant value in data management.
The registry impacts almost every aspect of the hardware and software installed on computers using the Windows operating system. Even the smallest registry corruption can cause crashes, lock-outs and potential data loss. A cluttered or poorly managed registry can also significantly impact performance. As such it is important to properly maintain the registries of any Windows computers. Whilst installation packs and system add / remove functions should maintain the registry in a reasonably robust fashion, fragments and redundant entries will almost invariably occur over time. In the event of a registry problem, corruption or data loss, the only way in which to reliably recover is to use a reputable registry recovery and protection application.
The main problem facing business owners here is the sheer breadth of choice – searching on Google brings up a host of results and it’s impossible to know which are trustworthy. Giving an unknown program access to your systems can cause big problems.
While there are many free registry programs, the best will be have some level of associated cost. This is particularly true if you are intending to install recovery and protection packages on multiple networked machines, which will require multiple software licences or an enterprise license. However, the price of protecting your PCs and ensuring that any abnormalities and registry issues are fixed without delay should be considered an investment against data disasters.
The best solution for most businesses will be a well designed centralised data architecture with secure online data storage. Not having to maintain and recover distributed data on site will free up IT staff to focus on other systems in building efficiency and profitability. That said, proper registry maintenance is now widely considered to be as important as decent anti-virus and firewall protection. In businesses with data distributed on multiple PCs, it should be considered a key element of a comprehensive data protection and recovery strategy.
