<< BACK TO SUMMARY

Backup Strategies

There’s always some humorous audio or video file circulating around the Internet, and a few years back there was one that tech support reps got great chortles out of. It was supposedly a tech support call to a computer repair shop, from an individual who had brought his computer in to be repaired and had picked it up. The call began with an obviously anguished customer saying, “What have you done with all my writing?” When the customer had got his computer home, he had booted it up, and found all his user data gone. The support rep taking the call explained that in order to fix the computer, they had needed to reformat the drive and reinstall all applications.

This apparently had been explained to the gentleman beforehand, but it was now obvious he hadn’t understood it. As the call went on, the customer got more and more upset, finally screaming that he had lost three years of his creative writing and was going to sue them.

Of course, anyone listening to this usually had this to say: “Has the guy never heard of BACK UPS?”

Anyone who has been around computers for very long at all has at least heard horror stories of not backing up data. It’s a given. Hard drives are not immortal – they can become corrupt, they can crash, they can die. There are data recovery services which can recover almost anything from a hard drive, but most home users, and many companies, could not afford these services. Best to just spend the minimal extra time and back it up in the first place.

For a home user, the easiest way to back up data these days is onto a CD. Most computers these days come with CD drives, and to take the extra step to copy or “save as” data onto a writeable CD is well worth the effort. It pays for itself the first time you have a hard drive go corrupt or crash. If you want to get more fancy, you can hook up an external hard drive to your computer, and simply back up all your data to it daily or weekly, or you can install another hard drive internally and do the same thing. Instructions for doing so can be found at many sites all over the web.

When you get into a networking situation, such as that found in a company, the importance of backing up of course becomes more vital. You can lose valuable company records, transaction data, customer data and more, just by being careless and not backing up.

Many companies still use the old tried-and-true method of backing up to tape, and storing the tapes somewhere off-site where it is safe should something happen to the building. The larger the site, usually the more complicated the backup scheme. Really big companies have separate networks dedicated to data storage and backup, and some even have robots which will load up backups when requested so older data can be quickly accessed.

Some companies also have a backup server, a server which literally duplicates the company’s main server. If the main server for some reason goes down, the backup server can be made the main server and the company can stay up and running.

Another method for both home and corporate sites which has evolved over the years is backing up to a Web site. The data is encrypted is such a way as it is not accessible by anyone except the user, and there are numerous sites out there which will back up your data for a small fee.

Now, what data should be backed up?

For an individual user, the answer is simple: Anything you care about! The way to judge is, how would you feel if whatever-it-is is lost? If you feel that twinge of grief just thinking about it, you should back it up.

For a company, the answer is a little more complex, but still runs along the same lines: What information, if lost to the company, would put that company at risk? Transactions are obviously important, as are customer records, financial data, contracts, and possibly quotes. Much of the time this type of information is contained in a database, and the data from the database is normally backed up daily.

Interestingly, though, I’ve run across a few companies that only backed up the “bare minimum” without considering the consequences, and worse yet, not informing the users that their data is at risk and how to fix it so it isn’t. For example, I’ve worked a couple places where users were saving their data onto their local drives, and these drives never got backed up. The server, containing the company database and some other important records, did get backed up, but the user data didn’t. Most system administrators don’t have the time or the personnel to back up each individual local drive in the company.

How important is that user data? More important than one might at first think. Again the obvious yardstick: Could the person do his or her job without that data? Probably not. Lost time and lost productivity, the bugaboos of any corporate CFO, should themselves motivate companies into seeing that users can back up their data. Unfortunately, though, this usually doesn’t become an issue until such data is lost and has to be recreated at great expense.

I’ve seen two solutions to this problem which made it easy:

The first was, a routine was set up on off-hours to backup any data stored in the “My Documents” folder on local drives. Users were informed that any data stored elsewhere would not be backed up, so any important data should be placed in that folder.

The second, more common and to me, the more sensible method is to create a network drive on which all user data is automatically saved. Each user has a folder on this drive, and within that folder they can create all the folders they want, as they can with their local drive. Then backup becomes a snap: Each night that network drive is backed up. End of problem, end of story.

What backup schemes have you found successful and cost-effective? Share them with us. We’ll publish the more worthy ones.

Backups as part of a total network solution

As mentioned above, there are numerous backup schemes you can choose from. Interestingly, backups is included as one of many remote desktop management features in RemoteScope, Micro2000’s powerful remote desktop management product. This feature will allow you to back up data from any computer on a network on which RemoteScope is installed.

In addition to saving time and worry about backing up user data, RemoteScope also saves having to travel to monitor users, install updates and patches or update or install new software. In addition, it keeps track of all your installed hardware and software and what you have installed on which machines.

There are numerous products on the market to assist you in performing these functions, but very few perform them all – simply, affordably, and from one location.