Backup
Strategies...
Anyone who has been around
computers for very long at all has at least heard horror stories
of not backing up data. It's a given. Hard drives are not
immortal – they can become corrupt, they can crash, they can
die. There are data recovery services which can recover almost
anything from a hard drive, but most home users, and many
companies, could not afford these services. Best to just spend
the minimal extra time and back it up in the first place.
For a home user, the easiest way to back up data these days
is onto a CD. Most computers these days come with CD drives,
and to take the extra step to copy or “save as” data onto a
writeable CD is well worth the effort. It pays for itself the
first time you have a hard drive go corrupt or crash. If you
want to get more fancy, you can hook up an external hard drive
to your computer, and simply back up all your data to it daily
or weekly, or you can install another hard drive internally
and do the same thing. Instructions for doing so can be found
at many sites all over the web.
When you get into a networking situation, such as that found
in a company, the importance of backing up of course becomes
more vital. You can lose valuable company records, transaction
data, customer data and more, just by being careless and not
backing up.
Many companies still use the old tried-and-true method of
backing up to tape, and storing the tapes somewhere off-site
where it is safe should something happen to the building. The
larger the site, usually the more complicated the backup scheme.
Really big companies have separate networks dedicated to data
storage and backup, and some even have robots which will load up
backups when requested so older data can be quickly accessed.
Some companies also have a backup server, a server which
literally duplicates the company's main server. If the main
server for some reason goes down, the backup server can be made
the main server and the company can stay up and running.
Another method for both home and corporate sites which has
evolved over the years is backing up to a Web site. The data is
encrypted is such a way as it is not accessible by anyone except
the user, and there are numerous sites out there which will back
up your data for a small fee.
Now, what data should be backed up?
For an individual user, the answer is simple: Anything you
care about! The way to judge is, how would you feel if
whatever-it-is is lost? If you feel that twinge of grief just
thinking about it, you should back it up.
For a company, the answer is a little more complex, but still
runs along the same lines: What information, if lost to the
company, would put that company at risk? Transactions are
obviously important, as are customer records, financial data,
contracts, and possibly quotes. Much of the time this type of
information is contained in a database, and the data from the
database is normally backed up daily.
Interestingly, though, I've run across a few companies that
only backed up the “bare minimum” without considering the
consequences, and worse yet, not informing the users that their
data is at risk and how to fix it so it isn't. For example, I've
worked a couple places where users were saving their data onto
their local drives, and these drives never got backed up. The
server, containing the company database and some other important
records, did get backed up, but the user data didn't. Most
system administrators don't have the time or the personnel to
back up each individual local drive in the company.
How important is that user data? More important than one
might at first think. Again the obvious yardstick: Could the
person do his or her job without that data? Probably not. Lost
time and lost productivity, the bugaboos of any corporate CFO,
should themselves motivate companies into seeing that users can
back up their data. Unfortunately, though, this usually doesn't
become an issue until such data is lost and has to be recreated
at great expense.
I've seen two solutions to this problem which made it easy:
The first was, a routine was set up on off-hours to backup
any data stored in the “My Documents” folder on local drives.
Users were informed that any data stored elsewhere would not be
backed up, so any important data should be placed in that
folder.
The second, more common and to me, the more sensible method
is to create a network drive on which all user data is
automatically saved. Each user has a folder on this drive, and
within that folder they can create all the folders they want, as
they can with their local drive. Then backup becomes a snap:
Each night that network drive is backed up. End of problem, end
of story.
What backup schemes have you found successful and
cost-effective? Share them with us. We'll publish the more
worthy ones.
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