Home
The Answers Blog
Computer Hardware
Operating Systems
Dental Practices
Recall Reminders
Network Technololgy
Network Security
Internet Security
Virus Basics
Spyware Basics
PC Checkup
Successful Websites
About Us
Contact Us
Website Links

XML RSS
What is this?
Add to My Yahoo!
Add to My MSN
Add to Google
 

Data Backup Strategies
Or, Consider the Tragedies!

Data Backup Strategies are the last thing most business owners consider, but should be at the top of the list!

Backup serves two basic functions, Disaster Recovery and Offsite Data Storage. All hard drives fail. It is not a question of if but when. Since we do not know when, we have to plan for the worst. You need to keep your data safe from:

  • Hard Drive Failures,
  • Data Corruption (Power Spikes, Brownoutsand Failure),
  • Virus and Spyware,
  • Physical Server Destruction (Fire, Vandalism or Flood),
  • Theft,
  • Backup failures (Not verifying Backup), and other unforeseen disasters

People ask us all the time, “When and how often should I back up?” The simplest answer is, backup when you don’t want to re-enter all your work since the last time you ran backup. Most companies should backup every day they use the computer. Most data can be re-entered, if you have the source documents. But, in a medical/dental environment, you physically need the patient to retake an x-ray or intra-oral camera image. Or, when you make or change an appointment over the phone, you probably will not remember who and when. Some of these lost transaction types can not be solved by backup alone. You need to add some level of RAID on your server so that you have “Real Time” transaction by transaction backup protection.

The “ideal” backup is a backup of everything, Operating System, Registry, Application Programs and Data, so that you can restore anything and everything at one time in the event of hard drive failures or data corruption caused by power interruptions, virus, spyware. This type of backup, Disaster Recovery, is nice to have but not always practical to implement. When your hard disk drive fails it will take hours or even days to get a hardware technician onsite to install a new hard drive and restore the Disaster Recovery backup. If you buy a computer from Dell, HP, Compaq, IBM, Gateway or any of the national brands and have onsite technical support, the technician will only install the new hard disk drive. Their onsite warranty does not include restoring backups. Additionally this Disaster Recovery backup will only work if you have the same computer. If you upgrade the computer because of age or performance the Disaster Recovery backup can not be used.

We recommend setting up an external (USB 2.0, Fire wire or eSATA) two disk drive rotation backup. On each drive you setup a folder for each day of the week your office is open. With the right software you can create a backup script for each working day that will automatically duplicate selected files and folders into the specified folder for that business day. You should rotate between the drives at least once a week, keeping one drive onsite to perform daily backup while the other is kept offsite to provide Offline Data Storage in case of fire, theft or vandalism.

To determine how large a back up drive you need, simply go to My Computer, right click on Drive C Icon, left click on Properties. Check Capacity, (Size of Drive), Free Space, (Space not used), Used Space, (All Programs and Data), to find out how much of your hard drive is Used and Free. When I use external hard disk drives for backup I create a folder for each day of the week the office works, typically five. I then multiply the Used Space by ten. This gives me the size of external hard disk drive I need for backup over the next 3-5 years. For example, if you have 40GB of Used Space on your hard drive now, 5 days of backup would take a 200GB drive. Allowing for a 3 to 5 year growth in data a 400GB drive would be the best choice for your drive. I also recommend having two backup drives. One drive is left in office and is backed up nightly while the other drive if offsite. Once a week you swap drives and you will have a total of 10 days backups to restore.

RAID will perform the Disaster Recovery requirement of backup performing a transaction by transaction backup while the external drives will provide the Offsite Data Storage required to fully protect your company’s data.

What if your office is located in your home or you do not want to be bothered with rotating external drives between home and work? We suggest you check into Online Data Backup. There are companies that you can use that have encrypted safe backup services to a server in another location. In this case, Online Offsite Data Backup is well worth it!

For complete network security, we recommend all servers run with a minimum of RAID Level 1 plus an effective Offsite Data Backup strategy. Make your plan simple, automated, and verify daily.



Return from Data Backup Strategies to Network Security


footer for data backup strategies page