We already have backups — how do we know they'd actually work?

You test them, which almost nobody does. Untested backups fail at an alarming rate — jobs silently erroring for months, critical folders never included, restore media that won't mount. We run scheduled test restores and document the results, so "are we protected?" has an evidence-based answer instead of a hopeful one.

Can ransomware encrypt our backups too?

Yes, if backups sit on the same network with the same credentials — attackers deliberately destroy backups before triggering encryption. We keep immutable, offsite copies that can't be altered or deleted even with stolen admin credentials, which is exactly what makes paying a ransom unnecessary.

What's the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Backup is the copy of your data; disaster recovery is the plan and infrastructure to get your business running again, and how fast. A backup might take days to restore onto replacement hardware. A DR plan defines acceptable downtime up front and builds the recovery path to meet it.

How quickly could we be back up after a server failure?

That's a business decision we make together, then engineer to. Some clients need critical systems virtualized and running within hours; others can tolerate next-day recovery at lower cost. What matters is that your recovery time is chosen deliberately and tested — not discovered during the disaster.

Does Microsoft 365 or Google already back up our email and files?

Not in the way you need. Those platforms replicate data for their uptime, but deleted or ransomware-corrupted content ages out of retention permanently — and they explicitly place data protection on you. We back up Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to independent storage with long-term retention.

How long do you keep our backed-up data?

Retention is set per client based on operational and regulatory needs — healthcare, legal, and financial firms often require years. We typically layer frequent short-term recovery points with longer-term monthly archives, and we document the policy so it holds up in an audit or insurance application.

Backup & Disaster Recovery for Sacramento Businesses

Backup and disaster recovery means NorCal Tech Solutions keeps tested, ransomware-resistant copies of everything your business runs on — and a rehearsed plan to get you operating again within a defined number of hours, not "whenever we figure it out." It's for Sacramento small businesses of 5–100 employees whose data — client files, billing, records, email — is the business.

The problem: most backups are a belief, not a fact

Ask a business owner if they have backups and nearly everyone says yes. Ask when they last restored a file from them, and the room goes quiet. Backup is the most falsely reassuring checkbox in small-business IT: software gets installed, a green icon appears, and everyone stops looking — while jobs silently fail, new folders never get added, and the one copy that exists sits on the same network the ransomware will encrypt.

And ransomware changed the rules. Modern crews hunt down and destroy backups first, because a business that can restore won't pay. A backup drive plugged into the server, or a cloud sync tool like OneDrive faithfully syncing encrypted files over good ones, is not protection — it's an assumption waiting for its test.

The second failure is planning. Even a good backup answers only "is the data safe?" It doesn't answer the question that actually determines the damage: how many days is the business down while someone sources hardware, rebuilds servers, reinstalls applications, and restores terabytes? For most unprepared businesses, the honest answer is measured in days to weeks — and every one of them costs payroll, revenue, and clients.

The outcome: recovery in hours, verified in advance

We design backup around two numbers agreed with you up front: how much data you can afford to lose (recovery point) and how long you can afford to be down (recovery time). Then we build to them — and prove it.

Servers and critical systems are imaged frequently, with copies kept locally for fast restores and replicated offsite to immutable storage that stolen credentials can't delete. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace data gets its own independent backup, because the platforms' retention won't save you. Every job is monitored daily by a human-reviewed process, and failures get fixed the day they happen — not discovered the day you need the restore.

Most importantly: we test. Scheduled test restores and recovery drills verify that the plan works and how long it takes, with documented results you can hand to an insurer, an auditor, or your own peace of mind.

What's included

Image-based backup of servers and critical workstations
Immutable, encrypted offsite copies resistant to ransomware and credential theft
Independent Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace backup (mail, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams)
Defined recovery time and recovery point objectives, agreed in writing
Rapid virtualization of failed servers so work continues during rebuilds
Daily backup monitoring with same-day remediation of failures
Scheduled test restores and annual disaster recovery drills, documented
Retention policies matched to your regulatory requirements
A written disaster recovery runbook: who does what, in what order

Backup is the last layer — pair it with the first

Disaster recovery is what saves you when everything else fails, but it works best behind strong prevention: our cybersecurity services make it far less likely you'll ever pull the DR runbook off the shelf. Both are built into our full managed IT services plan, and if you're subject to HIPAA or the FTC Safeguards Rule, documented and tested backups are a named requirement — see IT compliance.

How we build your recovery posture

The process starts with a conversation most owners have never been asked to have: which systems can be down for a day, which for an hour, and which not at all? Those answers — not a product brochure — drive the design. We then inventory every place business data actually lives (servers, cloud tenants, that one critical laptop), deploy the backup stack, and seed the first offsite copies. Within the first month we run the initial test restore with you watching, so the protection is demonstrated rather than asserted. From there the rhythm is steady: daily job verification, monthly spot-restore tests, and an annual recovery drill that walks the runbook end to end — timed, documented, and filed where your insurer and your future self can find it.

Who it's for

Any Sacramento-area business where losing data or losing a week would be catastrophic — which is nearly all of them, but especially medical and dental practices with patient records they're legally required to protect, CPA firms mid-tax-season, and construction or manufacturing businesses running job costing and scheduling off a single server.

We build and support recovery infrastructure across the region from our Sacramento office — coverage details for Sacramento, Elk Grove, Rocklin, and every city we serve.

Want certainty instead of a green icon? A free IT assessment includes a backup reality check: what's actually protected, what isn't, and how long recovery would really take today.