Dr. Kenneth Grabowski has been an orthodontist in the Kalamazoo/Portage area for over 20 years. The team at Dr. Kenneth Grabowski Orthodontics prides itself in providing a personalized experience and treatment plan for each patient.

Dr. Kenneth Grabowski Orthodontics
has been practicing for over 20 years.
http://www.grabowskiortho.com/

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20 years of practicing orthodontics has amassed quite a bit of patient data, but also payroll data, billing data, and more. To keep that data safe Grabowski Orthodontics employed a 24 hour 2 tape rotating backup system. Each tape held a 24 hour snapshot of business critical data and each night an employee would run the tape back up, remember to use the correct tape, and take both tapes home and back in the morning.

“If we forgot to put a tape in at night, or bring the tape back in in the morning, there wasn’t a current backup,” said Kellie Simmons, Office Coordinator.

Tape Backups are very similar to the process of recording a TV show onto a VHS. As the tape turns data is recorded sequentially, making it a very long process. To backup 1TB of data drive, on an LTO-6 at 160MB/sec, can take over 2 hours. And restoring that data, if needed, requires even more time.

34% of companies never
test their backups

As these tape backup cassettes become older, the tape degrades & stretches, making it more likely the data on the tape will be corrupted. In the event of a disaster the data may not be accessible. According to Storage Magazine, 34% of companies have never tested their backups. Of those that did, 77% discovered tape failure.

“Before Newmind we would print a set of pictures or x-rays to keep in a patient’s chart because we were unsure if our software or IT provider were backing them up, due to poor communication and customer service,” explained Kellie.

When Newmind stepped in it became apparent patient x-ray images were not being backed up and were so large that the current tape backup system would not support the data.

Needless to say, keeping their business critical data safe and accessible was getting to be a hassle and troublesome. A faster, more automated backup solution was needed.

The staff at Grabowski Orthodontics.

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Newmind implemented an automated onsite and secure offsite backup solution. Backup data is stored locally on high capacity USB and network storage The data is also independently duplicated to a secure offsite storage facility. In the event of a physical disaster in the building, all data can be transferred from the secure offsite data store, to a new physical server.

The backups run automatically, and engineers are notified right away if there are any issues with the backup. Monthly executive summary reports include information on the backups, that Grabowski staff receive for record keeping and compliance.

“The automated backup saves us the headache of remembering to do the backup & remembering to bring it back the next day. Now I don’t even think about it. And now I don’t freak at the thought of an image missing or even if our servers where to go down. I know we have a plan of action to be able to retrieve and recover if ever needed. We have a piece of mind and that you can’t put a dollar on,” explained Kellie.

Data corruption can occur at anytime and is not always immediately detectable. Such was the case one day when trying to access a patient’s x-ray image records, saved weeks earlier.

They were missing.

“The images allow us not only to diagnose, but we can refer back to the images to validate our services. If we did not have them or if they disappeared it would be very difficult to operate as a business. Needless to say they are very important,” stressed Kellie.

Due to the automated redundant backup process Newmind had implemented, Newminder, Ryan Russey was able to access the local & remote backups, compare them to the live system, and recover the needed files in minutes instead of hours or days, without interrupting office productivity!

“Since Newmind had already encouraged our office to be proactive by having a backup system in place, they were able to come in that day and restore the lost images. We were able to continue with business as usual and return to a much happier doctor!” added Kellie.