It’s nothing new that data is crucial to business, and that’s why we must keep regular backup files of data.
What to backup?
There are different philosophies on backup storage and what should be backed up. Well my philosophy on data backup files is simple, backup the data you need, not the installed software or operating system, and make the backup process as easy as possible, or people won’t do it. It’s human nature. Why I may explain in another future article.
So working with a customer who was having trouble with their backups being properly run in part because their people did not change the physical tape in the drive so they kept overwriting all of the backup files to the same backup storage media, which is a problem in a case where they might have a corrupted file and need to go back a few days or a week or so to get an uncorrupted copy of that file.
The issues the staff had with making backups.
Since the office staff often forgot to change media and we wanted to keep multiple days of backup files we needed an easier solution. Money was also a concern, especially in this economy. So we came up with the idea of using an external hard drive for backup storage of the data, and using multiple backup locations on that hard drive to backup multiple days onto a single hard drive.
What did we need, and what could we afford?
The first thing we had to do was see approximately how much data they were backing up on their office server. We found that the actual data we wanted to backup was less than 100 Gig. So simple math told us that if we wanted to back up 5-7 days worth of data it would be no problem to store on Terra-byte hard drive. We found multiple name brand manufactures of Terra-byte hard drives that were under $100. The price of many backup storage systems is $500 or more plus the backup media can be $40 or more a piece.
So price wise and space wise we decided that for under $300 we should get a couple of external Terra-byte hard drives backup storage and swap them on a weekly basis.
Then we simply had to set up the backup software to run multiple schedules, one for each night of the week, to back up to a separate location on the external hard drive.
Results:
Now the office staff only has to swap out the hard drive once a week, and I recommend that they take the one that was connected to the server offsite. So now they have 5-7 days worth of backup offsite, and the office only has to remember to swap media once a week, which is much easier for them to do routinely. And even if they forget to swap it on Monday, it will simply overwrite last weeks Monday’s backup, keeping Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri all still available.
So for a smaller office with a fair amount of data and files to backup, this solution works very well.