Data Backup Pro

By Luke Garfield

Do you have a plan in case of an unexpected loss of data? All computers no matter how secure or well maintained can at some point, lose data, either by human error, power outage, or hardware malfunction. Are you prepared for such a circumstance? If not, and your only recourse is to take your hard drive to a data recovery service, you may find your business down for days or weeks, having to pay for a costly repair and data recovery, and some of your data may be gone forever. Data recovery is a highly technical and highly skilled craft and therefore, expensive.

Obviously, no one can plan for unexpected data loss, but what you can plan for is restoring lost data economically and promptly. Hard drive backup is a way to insure your business against unexpected data loss. Backing up your data gives you a way to restore lost data in-house which means less costly than a data recovery service, probably quicker and lesser chance of permanently lost data.

There are basically two types of backups. A ‘real’ incremental backup is usually a single, encrypted file or image of the hard drive. The file is created, encrypted and if need be unencrypted by a proprietary software. By making incremental images of your hard drive using such software, you have the ability to restore your drive or individual files to a state at a previous point in time. One disadvantage of this kind of backup is that you must use the same software to unencrypt the image files as you used to encrypt them. If you lose that software for whatever reason, you may not be able to restore your data.

The other type of backup is what most people think when they think of a backup and that is simply a copy of everything on your hard drive or specific files on it. Cloning files on a hard drive requires no special software, and therefore it’s simpler and cheaper. What’s not as simple is being able to restore you data to a previous point in time. It’s not impossible, just not as convenient as making image files as described above.

When making a backup, what should you backup? Well, most modern operating systems have simplified things a bit by separating user created files, user settings, operating system files, and applications. You can of course backup everything, but it might be simpler to make incremental and frequent backups of the user data and settings only. That way you can save time making backups and save space on your backup media. You can always reinstall the operating system and applications, and then use your backup to restore the lost data. That is of course if your operating system and all your applications have the capability to save user settings and customizations that you can backup and consequently restore. If not, you might waste a lot of time resetting everything after a fresh install, in which case it might be better to backup everything on your hard drive. These are things you’ll have to consider for your particular situation.

Now that you’ve decided what kind of backup to make and what you want to backup, you have to decide on what type of media to record your backups. Here are a few options to consider, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Tape has been around a long, long time and is used by businesses large and small with complex multi-user systems and vast databases of information. Tape is relatively inexpensive and easy to remove to a remote location if need be. Although it can be slow to record to tape.

DVDs or other optical data storage usually cost more per unit of memory than tape, and they have less storage capacity per unit and are even slower to record. But, they are faster to read from and also very easy to remove to a remote location.

Another option is getting extra hard drives. Although the most expensive option for backup media, they are the fastest to read and write. But, depending on the type, it may or may not be removable. Being able to remove your backups becomes a serious consideration when the security of your data is a concern.

Now that you have a backup, what should you do with it? Keeping your backup locally, either as part of your system or in the same building is convenient. It also makes the job of getting your backup in time of need much quicker. But what if your system is completely destroyed by fire or some other natural disaster? You might lose your data and your backup. This illustrates the advantage of keeping your backups in a remote location. Although your backups might be safer in a remote location, you lose the convenience of being able to quickly restore lost data since you would then have to retrieve the backup from another location before you can use it.

One final consideration about backing up your data is the security of your data. If you protect sensitive data on your system with encryption or other means, wouldn’t you want the backup of that data to be protected as well? Encrypting data doesn’t necessarily provide bullet proof protection and making backups or copies of sensitive data just means more opportunities for potential thieves to get their hands on it, especially if you spread those copies out in remote locations for safety. That’s just more places in which you’ll have to provide security of those backups.

Hope this article gives you some idea on what your options are and the disadvantages and advantages of each.

Luke Garfield
Respected computer scientist and author.
Visit http://computerdatarecovery.netfirms.com for more articles like this.