Having a good backup strategy can allow you to have a good Plan B in case you lose your data. For many businesses it is a legal requirement as well. The biggest risk group for data loss is businesses who have small LAN setups and standalone computers. That isn’t surprising as many small businesses are uneducated about the importance of backup and do not have procedures in place to create regular backups. Contrary to popular belief, backups do not cost time or money.

How to Formulate a Sound Backup Strategy

In order to formulate your backup plan, you should consider

• The data you wish to back up.
• The desired output location to store your backups.
• Who administers the backups? Will they need training?
• What software and hardware are required for purchase?
• How frequently backups will run?
• Will staff need training to use backup procedures?

What Data You Need to Backup and How Frequently

The first step is to prioritize the order in which you backup your data. The order in which you backup will be determined by how important a data set is.

• High Priority data such as financial records, accounts, running projects, address books and emails which are absolutely crucial need special attention, backups should be made daily, and tests should be run in order to test the validity of backups.
• Low Priority data such as downloadable software, videos, images and installed applications can be backup up less frequently as they are less urgent and can be replaced without backups.
• Legal Requirements dictate that certain financial records must be backup. They also dictate how data is stored for live use as well as backup archives.

It’s also worth bearing in mind, that data should be backed up according to the frequency of use. There will always be certain files in any organization which change several times every day, and other files that do not change at all (e.g. accounts which change every day should be backed up at the close of business every day).

High Priority Data

A simple test to find out if files qualify as “high priority” is to ask yourself if you could do without the said files. Would you be at a significant loss if you lost your client list, order inquiries, or purchase invoices? Chances are the answer would be a “yes” so they should be regarded as high priority.

Accounts, spreadsheets, and other important data should be organized in logical folders following a descriptive tree structure to facilitate in the backup process.

Emails should be backed up weekly, in case they are hacked or important emails are accidentally deleted. Most email providers will provide POP3 or IMAP connectivity enabling you to download all the emails with a client like Thunderbird to create local backups, other web based email providers will enable you to create backups at source and download the entire archive.

Before backing up emails, it’s wise to clear out spam. This must be done carefully to avoid deleting non-spam emails.

Emails are often overlooked, but can be very useful several years later. They often contain important contacts that you will need to refer to years later, help with auditing, etc.

Lower Priority Data

Any outdated files, images, videos etc which aren’t urgent needs can be permanently deleted from the disk to free up drive space. Necessary files that aren’t crucial, but still help with the functioning should be backed up weekly or monthly.

Legal Compliance

State Laws on data retention requirements as well as data protection are always evolving alongside technological advances. It’s important to look up local laws in regards to data protection, freedom of information, privacy bills and information regulations to find out what your exact legal obligations are on what data to store and how.

Hardware Required for Successful Backups

Hardware required for backups is inexpensive, and in many cases the users will already have the necessary hardware in place to start performing backups.

To begin, users need to roughly work out how much space a typical backup will require. Software like Acronis True Image will compress the backup down to 50-80% of the space it takes up on your drives, however users will need much more space in order to keep 2-3 previous versions of backups in order to create a second safety net in case a more recent backup fails.

• How much capacity does each user folder take up?
• What is the size of their email archive?

Furthermore, data storage requirements tend to grow exponentially over time, so you will need to have 4x more data capacity than you need in order to future proof your hardware.

External Drive Backups

Currently, hard drives are cheap. They typically run on USB 2.0 and firewire connectivity, although firewire is set to be phased out in favor of USB 3.0 which is more accessible and faster than firewire.

Advantages

Cheap to buy, highly compatible and easy to use, frequently come bundled with backup software allowing users to back up straight out of the box.

Disadvantages

Ideal for backing up a single computer, or one computer at a time, these drives tend to use the same technology as internal hard drives, and are prone to data corruption from dropping the devices and from contact with magnetic instruments, although many do have built in magnetic shields.

You can view a list of great deals on external hard drives here.

Network Attached Storage

Network Attached Storage (NAS) are LAN based storage systems which can be connected to via any computer on the network.

Advantages

NAS are simply an extension to the external drive backups discussed earlier. A hard drive is connected directly to the router, instead of an individual computer. It’s inexpensive and enables every user to access the drive. After the drive is mapped on to a terminal, software applications like Acronis can make whole drive backups or individual file/folder backups straight onto the NAS, meanwhile the drive is still accessible by others.

Disadvantages

Can impair network performance when backup is taking place, and leaves the NAS open to accidental deletion by end users. NAS should be an intermediary backup for an IT technician to make more secure archives later.

Online Storage

Online storage has become a viable option to backup large amounts of data, thanks to fast internet connectivity. Online backup services have been largely designed for consumers in mind to store music, documents, and small zip files, however with increasing emphasis on data security and encryption as well as adherence to regulatory bodies, online storage is fast becoming useful for small businesses to store backups on a highly secure offsite server.

Advantages

Free 5GB accounts available with highly regarded services like SugarSync and OpenDrive. Manual services like Skydrive offer 25GB. With the installation of the backup utility, users can begin to automatically backup their files on the fly. For a small price of $5 users can get unlimited backup storage allowance from services like Carbonite.

Disadvantages

Unsuitable for large files, as upload speeds are limited by your Internet connection. Not suitable as main backup source as files and folders of backups and constantly modified and risk of corruption is present. Regulation may also prohibit use of online storage as primary or sole backup method for business related documents.

Administration and Liability

It must be noted that responsibility for making backups ultimately lies with the owner; therefore, owners will need to take adequate measures to create a fail safe backup mechanism. Unfortunately, despite all the promises made by online backup services, if the backups do go wrong, the responsibility still comes down to an owner.

This is why it’s paramount to use a variety of different backup methods. Online backup as well as secure local backups should be performed, and the backup drives should ideally be detached from the network when not in use to prevent accidental deletion.

Scheduled Backups

The technician can elect to create scheduled backups. On a weekly basis the technician will gather all the files and archive them in order to allow the files to be recovered in case the files are lost or deleted.

The backup software will have tools available to test the backup in order to make sure that it works properly. This must always be performed, in order to make sure you have a workable backup with which you can restore your files.

Automated Backups

Software like Norton Ghost allows automation of the backup procedure. The software runs in the memory of each computer and keeps a record of file changes, and then on a daily or weekly basis any additional changes made to the system are updated on the backups. The software can be set up to create daily or weekly backups of the system or just user files.

Windows has its own built in backup program which can be found by typing backup in the search box. Mac users are able to download the backup utility from the Apple website.

However, a commercial backup solution is more preferable due to the flexibility offered. Worthy contenders for the best Windows backup software are Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and Paragon Drive Backup.

About the author: Abdul Karim is a tech geek and a full time network administrator. In his spare time he writes about online backup services, and enjoys swimming and salsa dancing.

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