What is a Backup?
In simple terms – It’s a copy of your work.
Taking a copy of your files databases, pictures etc from a primary location to a secondary location.
Why backup?
- You can lose or delete information
- Information can get corrupted
- Virus infections can make your information unusable
- Information can be destroyed by fire or flood, the information could be stolen or you equipment storing the information could develop a fault.
If you take a backup and you lose information you won’t have to do redo that work
If you have 25 people saving work and the work gets corrupted you’ve potentially lost a lot of time and money.
Some stored information is precious – protect that work by using a backup
What to backup
Backup any and all information that you don’t want to lose
This can be Pictures of your family, audio files – child’s first words, Accounts information, Documents, Quotes, your unpublished novel etc etc, if it would cause you pain to lose the information then back it up.
How often?
On a personal level if you do a sizeable amount of work, like a chapter of this new book that you are writing, take a backup, then if your work gets destroyed you have a copy.
The more work you do the more frequently you should backup.
On a company level depending obviously on how you work you should backup all of the company information at least once per day, twice would be better.
The more backups that you take the less information that you’ll potentially lose.
Backup Locations
Local – in the same building
Off-site – take backup home or in the cloud
Cloud – I would like to clarify what cloud backup means: it is simply the process of copying your information, through the internet, to a data storage location. When the information gets to its destination it is stored in huge data storage containers: think of it as a very large hard drive, located anywhere in the world, and connected to your system via an extremely long network cable.
- Local on-site backup – quick and easy to restore work, prone to infections
- Off-site backup – far more secure but can take longer to restore
- Local & off-site backup – Best option – Use local backup for speed of restore, if these backups are corrupted or infected by virus infections then revert to the online backup
Backup Devices
Personal Level:
1- Copy information to a USB Memory Stick – It’s inexpensive and easy to do
2- Backup information to an external hard drive – It’s inexpensive, easy to do and you can store a lot more information on an external hard drive.
3 – Copy information to a cloud location – One drive etc, most part it’s free and easy to do
Company Level:
1 – Backup to a hard drive and take off site
2 – Backup to a Network Attached Storage box (NAS) Box for the (local backup) and backup the same copy to a secure cloud location (offsite Backup)
Make sure that you have more than one copy of your backed-up data, why – that backup could be corrupted or encrypted when you need it most.
Types of Backup:
File backup – copies individual files/folders, pictures etc to a location either locally, off-site or locally & off-site
Pros – Cheap to implement, backs up company data
Cons – Does not backup computer programs, configurations, settings etc,
Install Windows, programs etc before restoring data
Can take a lot of time to get the system back up & running
You have to remember to add new information to the backup
Image backup
Takes a snapshot of the computer to a location either locally, off-site or ideally locally & off-site
Pros – Offers complete disaster recovery facilities, all programs, configurations, settings and data are backed up.
Restores all of the computer including Windows & programs back to a full working state.
It means that you will be backup & running quickly.
Cons – Can be more expensive than file backups
Tips:
- Make sure that what you backup is the correct information, too many times I’ve gone to restore information and the important stuff has not been backed up.
- Check on a regular basis that your backups are working, don’t wait until you actually need to restore your information.
- Periodically restore some data to test that your backups are working.
- Make sure that the person in charge of your backups knows – What to backup -When to backup – Where to backup your information.
- If possible, automate your backups because you may forget to manually run the backup routine.
To sum it all up:
The biggest threat to computer data is virus infections and managed backups go a long way to neutralising this threat.
I believe that the best form of disaster recovery is to regularly take “full image” backups of your system and store these on-site and in a secure cloud-based location.
I do hope that you have found this video and blog interesting and if you do need any more information, then please get in touch
– Pete
