Stepping away from the software and web design for a moment to have a little technical talk about backups.
Home Users
Backup for home users, there are a few ways that you can back up your system as a home user either on your PC or Laptop you will have the built in windows backup which is a very handy tool and depending on what PC you have for example Acer they generally come with their own backup software.
Using window backup you normally get 2 choices when backing up. If you have an external hard drive that is larger than your PC/Laptop hard drive you can go for the mirror backup which makes an exact copy of your hard drive. The other option allows you to choose folders that you want to back up for example My Documents, My music and any other folder that you have. You can back up straight to an external hard drive that is connected to your PC/Laptop of if you have multiple users and also have data that you would like to share between all PC’s and Laptop’s that you have you could invest in a NAS(Network Attached Storage)
NAS boxes are very simple devices all you have to do is attach it to your router with a network cable and you’re ready to do this allows you and other PC/laptops to backup to this device over the network with wireless or by cable. Allowing every PC/Laptop to have access to this allows everybody to share music, pictures and videos to other users in the house.
When buying a NAS I would recommend that you get at least 2TB(terabyte) or more if possible you can get a NAS that stores multiple hard drives so that you can increase the data store size available.
Business users
For a business user there are a few more ways that you can protect you data with backups, One of the older types of backups is Tape devices like a DAT72 or DAT 160 used for server backups. DAT 72 can backup a maximum of 72GB the a 2:1 compression ratio but this is not always that case as a lot of files are already compressed and the tape its self is 36GB so normally the amount of data that will fit is between 38-60GB.
NAS Boxes are an addition for server backups they keep a backup of the data on site and work with a tape backup. The tape backup is an offsite backup so that you have you data away from the original in case of fires. When you have large amounts of data you can use external hard drives for your offsite Backup there are a few advantages from using these instead of tapes. External drives do not need replacing as often as tapes. They require not device to back up data where takes need a tape drive to backup data and this is where the extra cost comes in as you need to clean the tape device and a cleaning tape adds to the running cost of the device.
The types of backup
Incremental: This type of backup usually takes less time and incremental back up works from the first full run back up and when it is run it checks for any data changes and anything that has been added and makes a small backup with all of the data that it finds different from the last run. You can run 3 of these a day and they can take 5 minutes.
Full Data Image: Once a week you can perform a Full image backup of the system normally done on the weekend where no one will be working. The full data image is very much like the Full backup for home uses it works in the same way.
As well as server backups your employees computers need backing up to that uses user area so that this can be added to the server backups make sure that backups do not conflict with each other as this can cause software problems.
A popular backup software for business users in Symantec, They offer software that enables you to control the data that is being backed up and how it is done, normally you will have 2 programs one will be used for the backup to the NAS box that stays on site and the other will be used for offsite backups.
Hope you take all of this in to consideration as data loss can have a major effect on a company if important files are lost and a data recovery service and cost £1000’s.
