TECHNOLOGY - Backup and Recovery

It is very important to back up your data on your hard drive whether the computer you have is your own personal one or whether you run a company with hundreds of computers. We will go over the different ways you can back up your Data in either situation.
It is always good to have a disaster recovery plan in place in the event that the hard drive becomes damaged due to natural disasters, or defective for example, by disc read errors due to damaged portions of the disc.

1. BUSINESS

Having a disaster recovery plan in a business is imperinent as once a computer or several, or even hundred computers go down, it is extremely vital that they are up and running in as short time as possible. The loss of production could cost thousands of dollars in only a matter of minutes. A Network Administrator should have a disaster recovery plan in place to have the computers up and running in as little time as possible.

It is a good idea to back up data on a daily basis. There are different hardware to back up data and tapes are usually used in businesses. Store you tapes in an off-site location in case of a natural disaster. Have in place a plan to move staff to an off-site location prepared and ready to set up in case of such a large natural disaster.

You can back up your data using incremental or differential backups or regular backups. Always start with a full back up. Incremental will back up only files changed from last backup and is a quick way to backup files but a longer restore time. It is a good idea to do a full backup once a week and incremental backups the other 5-6 days per week.
Differential backups only backup changes from last full backup and have a shorter restore time.

It is a good idea to keep hardcopies of all your files in case of fire or natural disaster. If there is a loss of date you have these to reenter into the computer. Reentering hardcopies takes a lot of time and money, a tape backup of data is essential to a business.

2. HOME

With a home computer, we get lazy in backing up our data. A good idea is to put important data on a cd/dvd, have a second hard drive to copy all files onto, or find an online site with a server you can load backup copies of your files onto.
This is important not only if you have a home business, but also for photos of family memories and digital videos as well.
For a home business it is a good idea to have hard copies of all your work as well. It is well worth the time to purchase a printer and print out your hard copies and keep them in a safe place. It is good to practice business procedures and keep your hardcopies off site if at all possible.