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Data-Backup-and-your-Business

By: mozza

The best insurance policy any business can invest in is to backup data regularly, but data backup can be expensive and time consuming. Another issue is that data is becoming more disparate and businesses are creating “data islands” such as data which resides in different places like computers, servers, laptops, external hard drives to name a few. No matter what tasks you have set for the day, the task of data backup will probably be at the bottom of your list. So how do you simplify and automate the process; lets look at your options?

Option 1 is to backup to an external USB or second internal hard drive. This solution can only be easily used by home users or one computer business environments. This is with out doubt the quickest and most cost effective solution. A second hard drive with a capacity of 300GB can be purchased for less than £60 and a sizable USB drive can be purchased for less than £100. It is easy to connect and you can manually copy data quickly. Please bear in mind this method does not backup your data, but you are merely copying it to another location. The point is hard drives fail, this is one reason you have decided to backup your data, and you may find your external drive fails before your computer or server does. Other things to bear in mind is that an external drive can be bulky which means you will not take it offsite, which means your data is still subject to the same natural disasters as before and you will have to manually copy the data every night.

Option 2 is to backup to CD or DVD. This is one of the safest ways to backup as hard drives are subject to virus and mechanical damage, CD and DVD are not. The standard shelf life for a CD or DVD is around 1 year before the disks start to degrade so you will be able to keep backups for a longer period of time. You can also buy a lot of disks for the price of one hard drive! Please understand you will find backing up this way to be very labour intensive as it takes a long time to copy especially when your backup files are larger and have to be copied to multiple disks. Other problem with backing up to CD or DVD is, the backup software that comes built into your operating system cannot backup to an optical disc, so you'll have to spend another £150 on a stable backup program.

Option 3 is NAS Backup or Network attached Storage Backup. This is like backing up to disk as per option 1 but this method would be used if you have multiple server, laptops or computers. For example a small business would backup data this way. This option allows users to backup many devices at once but also to use it to share and collaborate data. Cost is a potential factor here. Your NAS server has to have the drive capacity of all the devices it is backing up, as a result a NAS server can cost upwards of £2,000 and you still have to buy backup software. As with option 1 you still have the issue of not being able to take the server offsite every night so your data is still subject to the same potential natural disasters.

Option 4 is online backup aka offsite backup. This solution is relatively new and it has become huge as a result of low cost broadband internet connectivity. What differentiates the method from the others is it actually protects your data from disasters that can happen to your home or business environment. Because your data is stored “offsite” at a remote data centre it will always be safe, regardless of disaster. Businesses now state it is best practice to have one backup (locally) in the premises and one (or more) off premises. The good thing about online backup is, it's totally automated, all you do is tell the software what data you wish to backup and when, and that is it.

As the cost of hardware and internet connectivity has reduced, online backup solutions are now very affordable and provide you with a simple way to get your data safe. You must choose a reputable company with a long trading history, a company who takes your data confidentiality very seriously.

No backup solution which involves human intervention will be one hundred percent and what backup solution you decide to go with will very much depend on how you work. If your data is really important to you use an offsite or online backup solution.

Article Source: http://www.acmearticles.com

To find out more about how an offsite backup solution can help your business please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk

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