So you’ve decidedto backup your data but what is the next step? You must have a backup strategy irrespective of whether you are a homeuser or a business user.
The depth ofthe strategy is the only variant between these two types of users.
As time goes bypeople and businesses are facing massive and ever-increasing amounts of datathat are difficult to manage and that remain unprotected.
In this light, the need for a backup strategybecomes critical.
Let me just take emailas an example:the 12/2004 issue ofSmart Computing reports that 88% of adult PC users send and receiveemails.
The International DataCorporation reports that 16.
8 trillion emails were transmitted in 2004 withthis figure climbing to 19.
7 trillion this year.
According to Smart Computing, Americanbusinesses send about 9 billion emails a day.
On average, home-users transmitaround 435kb in email attachments every day.
One other research firm estimates that typical corporations with 5000employees accumulate 4 terabytes of emails every year.
The size of my Outlook PST file for 2004 atwork rested at 1.
4Gb; at home it was 650Mb! And finally, Dataquest estimates that the total number of hard diskdrives shipped in 2002 rests at 212.
5m units representing around 8.
5m terabytesof storage space.
Home-user dataincludes documents, audio and video files, scanned images, and digitalphotos.
Businesses have marketingcollateral developed and stored electronically, customer information stacked indatabases, financial records posted in accounting packages, budgets andbusiness plans recorded on network storage devices.
Asthis list grows, the need for a backup strategy becomes even more obvious! We usually advise customersto look at 5 key elements of any backup strategy: 1.
Investin good Backup Software: Read thereviews, visit the websites and look out for features and assurances that theproduct you are buying is reliable, fast and easy to use.
Spend time readingthe websites of the various suppliers.
Some products cost no more than $40 butyour data costs much more.
Losing yourdata because the software you have bought is not effective means that you havethrown away an extra $40! 2.
PlanYour Backups: Most software packages on the market have schedulers.
Usethese schedulers.
It doesn’t take muchtime to set up a timetable for backups.
Depending on how many times you useyour PC you can schedule your periodical backups: at work, I backup every dayat 9 a.
m..
At home, I backup once a week.
3.
Checkthe Integrity of your Restore:Even though youhave backed up, what guarantee do you have that your data can be restored whendisaster hits?The best way to ensurefull “restorability” of your data is to buy a backup product that has bit-levelverification (like WinBackup 2.
0).
Sucha feature makes sure that while the product is performing your backup it checksall the data down to the level of bits and bytes.
In essence, the software first back up thedata and then automatically performs a test restore to make sure that everysingle bit has been copied.
4.
Check the Integrity of your Backup Medium: You can have the bestsoftware in the world and back your data every hour, however, if you do nothave a good medium to store your archives, you are doomed.
The second best way to ensure therestorability of your data is to choose good mediums and to do regular testrestores from them.
5.
Check your hard drives regularly and make sure you have good anti-spyware and anti-virus software.
There is no harm in checking hard drives forerrors and bad sectors as these drives do fail over time.
Data Recovery and Backup Software
The depth ofthe strategy is the only variant between these two types of users.
As time goes bypeople and businesses are facing massive and ever-increasing amounts of datathat are difficult to manage and that remain unprotected.
In this light, the need for a backup strategybecomes critical.
Let me just take emailas an example:the 12/2004 issue ofSmart Computing reports that 88% of adult PC users send and receiveemails.
The International DataCorporation reports that 16.
8 trillion emails were transmitted in 2004 withthis figure climbing to 19.
7 trillion this year.
According to Smart Computing, Americanbusinesses send about 9 billion emails a day.
On average, home-users transmitaround 435kb in email attachments every day.
One other research firm estimates that typical corporations with 5000employees accumulate 4 terabytes of emails every year.
The size of my Outlook PST file for 2004 atwork rested at 1.
4Gb; at home it was 650Mb! And finally, Dataquest estimates that the total number of hard diskdrives shipped in 2002 rests at 212.
5m units representing around 8.
5m terabytesof storage space.
Home-user dataincludes documents, audio and video files, scanned images, and digitalphotos.
Businesses have marketingcollateral developed and stored electronically, customer information stacked indatabases, financial records posted in accounting packages, budgets andbusiness plans recorded on network storage devices.
Asthis list grows, the need for a backup strategy becomes even more obvious! We usually advise customersto look at 5 key elements of any backup strategy: 1.
Investin good Backup Software: Read thereviews, visit the websites and look out for features and assurances that theproduct you are buying is reliable, fast and easy to use.
Spend time readingthe websites of the various suppliers.
Some products cost no more than $40 butyour data costs much more.
Losing yourdata because the software you have bought is not effective means that you havethrown away an extra $40! 2.
PlanYour Backups: Most software packages on the market have schedulers.
Usethese schedulers.
It doesn’t take muchtime to set up a timetable for backups.
Depending on how many times you useyour PC you can schedule your periodical backups: at work, I backup every dayat 9 a.
m..
At home, I backup once a week.
3.
Checkthe Integrity of your Restore:Even though youhave backed up, what guarantee do you have that your data can be restored whendisaster hits?The best way to ensurefull “restorability” of your data is to buy a backup product that has bit-levelverification (like WinBackup 2.
0).
Sucha feature makes sure that while the product is performing your backup it checksall the data down to the level of bits and bytes.
In essence, the software first back up thedata and then automatically performs a test restore to make sure that everysingle bit has been copied.
4.
Check the Integrity of your Backup Medium: You can have the bestsoftware in the world and back your data every hour, however, if you do nothave a good medium to store your archives, you are doomed.
The second best way to ensure therestorability of your data is to choose good mediums and to do regular testrestores from them.
5.
Check your hard drives regularly and make sure you have good anti-spyware and anti-virus software.
There is no harm in checking hard drives forerrors and bad sectors as these drives do fail over time.
Data Recovery and Backup Software
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