There is more to backing up your information than you might think, and I’ll show you how to properly do it.
Some might be asking, “Why should I back up?” The answer to that is simple, disaster recovery. Some might be thinking that a disaster is highly unlikely, well, what about accidental deletion or user error? What about system or data corruption? We know this can happen to anyone at anytime. Backing up can save you the stress of data recovery after a disaster. There are a few elements to backing up. The first being Storage; where is the back up stored. The second is selection; what is backed up. Last is managing; how we administrate the process.

Their are a few different back up structures; unstructured, full plus incremental, and continuous data protection. Unstructured is just various floppy discs or burnable CD’s, of course no one is using this method anymore. Right? Well its time to re-evaluate and think this through. Full plus incremental does a full back up at first, then after that a number of smaller incremental backups can be taken. With continuous data protection the system immediately logs every change on the host system.

After deciding on the best back up structure for your environment, decide what storage media you are going to use. Magnetic tape is the most commonly used medium for bulk data storage, but there are many new options, especially for small offices. Things historically only available for large offices are now available at an affordable price to all offices. Hard disks have the advantages of low access times, availability, capacity and their ease of use. An optical disc, which is just a recordable CD or DVD provide a distinct advantage, as they can be restored on any machine with a CD-ROM drive. Remote backup is a service that is backing up at a different location via Internet. The advantage with this method is, it protects for any worst-case scenarios such as fires, floods, or earthquakes, which would destroy any backups in the immediate vicinity along with everything else.

There are two ways to manage your storage, online and off-line. Typically the most accessible type of data storage, online storage can begin to restore in milliseconds. Off-line storage requires human interaction to make storage media available. This can be as simple as storing backup tapes in a file cabinet. Media access time can be anywhere from a few seconds to more than an hour. Having only “one” structure of backup could leave the company vulnerable. We recommend putting multiple backups in place. If a business is only off-line, local backups could leave them exposed. Only on-line remote is good but if Internet access is an issue or if the data you think is being backed up and its not, then you only have one copy. Be sure to include redundancy: Redundant server drives, local backups, and consider remote backup. If you, as a business owner, are uncomfortable with remote services due to confidentiality, then be sure you have drives physically moved off-site each week.

Some options we like: Redundant Servers drives. Try serial ATA (SATA) at least two drives. Add removable drives, at least two, taking one off site. Then consider a remote vendor, we like Concentsus, and dropfolder.net.