What You Need to Know
About Choosing a Backup System
© 2003
Reprint by permission only. All
rights
reserved.
by Matt Hyatt
What’s the most valuable component of your company’s
computer network? The software, the data, or the server? Pat yourself
on the back if you answered “data” because that’s
where you’ll find the most value in any company network.
The time and money spent to recreate lost data can cost
far more than the price of software or a server, so it makes sense
to put
some effort into protecting that data.
Fortunately, backing up your company data isn’t as difficult
as you might think. While there are plenty of options, one or two
methods still stand out as the best. Here I’ve compiled
a list of the five most popular backup methods along with the
strengths
and weaknesses of each.
CD-RW / Zip: Rewritable CD and Zip drives provide an
easy way to backup relatively small amounts of data,
but they’re
not usually the best choice for companies with more than a handful
of files requiring backup. With capacities of just 750 megabytes
(or less), CD-RW and Zip media just aren’t big enough
to store the complete contents of a typical desktop or server
PC.
However, these kinds of media are relatively inexpensive
and small enough to carry in your pocket or send through the
mail. Many business
managers also find CD-RW and Zip media useful for
archiving small groups of project-related files in order to
free up storage space
on a desktop or server computer.
Rewritable DVD: With capacities up to 4.7 gigabytes
(4700 megabytes), rewritable DVDs are a nice alternative
to CD-RW or
Zip media. But for complete backups of company
data, most IT managers recommend something with more
capacity.
Portable Hard Drives: On the surface, a portable
hard drive sounds like a great idea. For a few
hundred dollars, you can buy one big enough to
back up two or three
computers.
Just
plug it into the USB or FireWire port on your
PC, run a backup, then cart the drive home for safekeeping.
File recovery
couldn’t
be easier either, since you can attach it to your system and use
it just like a regular hard drive. But to see why portable hard
drives aren’t practical for business backups, it’s
important to consider the reasons for backing
up in the first place.
While we all recognize the risks
of theft, fire,
and mechanical failure, the less-obvious and
more common risks to data are things like computer
viruses and
human error. Viruses and mistakes
aren’t confined to everyday files, though. They often
affect important data that we don’t use as often,
so we might not notice right away if an important
file were to
suddenly disappear.
Herein lies the problem.
Imagine that you’ve spent a long day working with your
accounting software to prepare for the year’s end. You save
the file at the end of the day and backup to your portable hard
drive. But
guess what? The file was corrupted when it was
saved, and you just wrote over your only good backup with the corrupted
version of
the file. Sounds like a disaster, huh? To avoid
that kind of disaster, it’s important to keep multiple backups
for as long as possible. For this, portable hard drives just aren’t
practical.
Online Backup Services: Some companies (including
mine) offer a compelling alternative to traditional
hardware-based data backups. Online backup
services allow users
to automatically
send
encrypted backup data to an offsite storage
facility at preset intervals. Multiple copies of the
data are kept over a period of
time, reducing the chance of losing important
data due to an overwritten backup. However,
a potential drawback to online backup services
is that most subscriptions limit use to single-user
computers with fewer than 10 gigabytes of data.
Tape Backup: Backing up data to tape is one
of the oldest and best methods for businesses
with large amounts of data. Modern
tape media comes in a variety of capacities
ranging from 2 gigabytes to more than 320.
With the lowest cost-per-megabyte of any popular
backup media, tapes are a good value, too.
The
low price keeps long rotation cycles affordable,
avoiding the problem of prematurely
overwriting backups.
Considering the hassle and expense of recreating
lost data, a solid data backup plan should
be a high priority for every business manager.
And while some backup
methods are
certainly better
than others, any backup is better than
no backup at all!
Matt Hyatt is founder
of Rocket IT, an IT consulting firm near Atlanta,
Georgia. For technology help with your business, contact Rocket IT at
770-441-2520 or visit online at www.rocketit.com.
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