24 February, 2006
Your
data is the most valuable single item on your computer. Without access to your
data, your business will stop and you may lose years of important information
and personal memories. All homes and businesses need to have a backup strategy.
The important
factors to look for in backup systems are reliability, portability, cost and
size. You need a backup device big enough to save your important data, it needs
to reliable and backups should e portable enough to store away from the computer
in the case of a fire or other building damage. Cost is always a major concern
but you should remember that lost data is priceless.
In this
article we look at the hardware. The software you
can use we've put in a separate article. With the hardware, we’ll start
with the smallest and simplest.
Flash Drives
|
|
For individual
users, the USB flash drive is one of the easiest ways to backup smaller
and personal information. It’s also useful for specialist programs
like accounting packages. We recommend flash drives for all home and home
businesses.
Pros:
Cheap, portable and easy to use.
Cons: Relatively
small capacity and high cost per meg of storage.
|
DVD Burner
|
|
CD
and DVD burners are the standby for most home and small business users
with up to 8G capacity available on a dual layer DVD. We recommend new
computers come with a DVD burner. External DVD burners can be plugged
into a USB or Firewire port.
Pros:
Standard format and portable
Cons: Burning
software is not always user friendly, there are concerns about long term
storage of disks.
|
Portable Hard drive
|
|
Portable
hard drives are small enough to fit in a purse or shirt pocket. These
are ideal for smaller offsite data storage. Simply copy your important
data to the drive and take it home!
Pros:
Relatively high capacity, portable.
Cons: High cost
per meg compared to full size hard drives and tape.
|
External Drives
|
|
We recommend external drives
as the first stage of a full business data backup strategy. Every evening
all your data is copied onto it. In the event of the computer failing
you can plug the drive into another computer and continue working without
interruption.
Pros:
Easy to setup and use. Cheap cost per meg.
Cons: Not so portable.
|
Tape Backup
|
|
In
the case of a catastrophe such as a fire or flood, offsite backup is essential.
For businesses we find tape backup offers the best balance of portability
and ease of backup. A scheduled rotating ten tape backup also ensures
up to a month’s data is always recoverable. We find tape and external
drives used together are an excellent business disaster recovery strategy.
Pros:
Easily automated, tapes are portable
Cons: Expensive
purchase price, tape software is NEVER user friendly.
|
Backup
needs vary with the needs of the individual computer user or business The best
backup strategies use a combination of onsite and offsite storage. The important
thing is that you can get your important data quickly when you need it.
