Thou shalt make back-ups

Recently a client lost 100 Gb of data when a hard drive failed.  With no effective back-up for much of the data, thousands of hours of work were lost.  Are you able to cope with such a disaster?  Many of us go through life hoping that it will never happen to me!

What are your options for back-up regimes? These will vary depending upon the amount of information you need to back-up, whether you have a network, & the degree of automation that you want.

  1. Use a USB drive.
    A cheap & convenient method for back-up.
  2. Back-up to another computer on a peer to peer network.
    This is a good solution if you’re able to get access to a shared hard-drive, but will not protect you against fire or theft. Perhaps it can be coupled with back-up to USB or external hard-drive. Remember to take a disk offsite for added security.
  3. Back-up your network server using Win back-up (ships free with Windows Server), or use a totally automated solution like Back-up Exec.
    Common Traps for the Unwary; The IT industry abounds with stories of people who have made back-ups for years, then learn after some computer disaster that they were recording onto the cleaning tape.
  4. Rotate your recording media regularly.
    Archive back-ups at regular intervals so that, if need be, you can rollback files to a particular date.
    REMEMBER – neglect to back-up at your peril.