Backups & Backup Practices

There are several different types of backup technologies out there. The most widely used and most secure type are tape drives. Tape drives are considered to be the most secure because of the fact that they don’t get assigned a drive letter. (c:, d:)

A lot of viruses are written to attack drive letters, so a device that doesn’t have a drive letter would be a more secure place for your data.

            There are different ways to perform a tape backup. One way is a full backup that copies all of the files you identified for backup. If your server has a good bit of data on it, performing a full backup on a daily basis would require massive amounts of space on your tape. In addition, the time it takes to perform a full backup could be quite lengthy.

            A good way to save space and time is to supplement a full backup with incremental backups. An incremental backup only copies the files that have been altered since the last backup. There is a drawback to using incremental backups. If some sort of data loss does occur, and you need to restore a certain file from the backup, you will have to go searching through the incremental backups for the latest version of the file. If you were using full backups everyday then you would just restore the file from the last backup and you would be back up and running.

            Having good backup practices are critical to maintaining business data. The first procedure to implement, is to ensure every user logs off at the end of the business day. Backups, normally, will not backup files that have been left open on someone’s computer. Another practice is to pick a tape replacement and location procedure. If you only use one backup tape, and this tape goes bad, recovery of files from that backup would not be possible. A good way to prevent a complete loss of backup up data is to use two tapes and alternate them on a weekly bases. This will ensure some data is available even if one tape goes bad. If two tapes are used, the tape from the previous week should be taken off site. This is as simple as taking the tape home with you and storing it there, or putting it in your briefcase for the week. This ensures that you have a good backup of your data even if something happens to the building. IE: Theft, fire, etc. . .

            Just imagine if your business lost all of its data. All of your databases, spreadsheets, word documents….Everything. Could the business function with this data loss?

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