Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello SUNies,

I need your help and advise..

I have been trying several backup techniques for all my digital information and work but I somehow feel I am not doing it properly....it seems tedious, time consuming and I am not sure if backing up my data to CDs has a good life time...I heard they malfunction after 5 years if not less....

What are your suggestions?  How do you do it in your businesses? How frequent? etc.

Thank you for your help...

Riham.

I just bought an external hard drive a few weeks ago and back up nightly.
I have a CD Burner on my dell but it doesnt accept any discs I insert and I dont
have time to call Dell and wait on the phone.  So far no problems. I bought
a Maxtor - 100 GB. It was on sale for $80. It did not come with software and
it doesnt have an on and off power switch  to shut it down at night, only the
usb. But for the money its fine.






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Jo
NJ

Riham?

Have you ever used data tapes? or a small server?
I think this is your best approach to backing up your data. Another thing you can do is save them to DVD`s.
Or an external drive. I`ve had Cd`s sitting there over 5 years and I can still retrieve my information from them.. Just make sure you don`t live 2 blocks from the beach or something like that, then the life expectancy is less.

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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

I use the backup mantra "If its not in two places it doesn`t exist." Now I have a lot of need for backup as I`m a digitally based photographer. I use external hard drives and DVD`s. A lot of my images are also on CD.

I have worked with companies that use Tape backup and its great for backing up the data, but not as quick if you have to retrieve it as it is very slow. And from my experience plus what others have said - when you make a tape, your going to have at least a couple of errors on it somewhere. Maybe that`s changed but I suspect not.

With my external hard drives (I have a few now) I only fire them up with writing to them or pulling something off. Hard drives have a "mean time between failures," which means they do fail. But, by only using them for a couple of hours a week at tops, they`ve been really reliable.


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NeilSpeers. com - Acoutstic blues / electric folk - independent music. Speersphoto.com - Commercial, industrial, corporate, & editorial photography based in Calgary, Alberta. Neil Speers 403 230 4042

your best bet go with DVD`s and keep them in a dry area.
No humidity...

-------------------------

Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Thank you very much for your replies :)

I have already tried the DVD and external harddisk option but with the DVD I always get errors while writing to it and it ends up in the trash can!  I dunno why this is happening although I have a combo CD/DVD writer....is this normal?

My external harddisk also failed 2 months ago and I have no idea why too (it came only with the usb just like yours watergal).

I didn;t try data tapes but as far as I know these are the ones used in banks and enterprises....is this an expensive option?

I am in the process of deploying a small server in my network....so far I backup on individual PCs....and I think this may be the best option for daily backup..

Would you recommend DVDs to backup the small server itself? As CalgaryPix said "If its not in two places it doesn`t exist." and I still need to backup my backup.. external backup companies are not a good option for me.

One other question that comes to my mind now is the best naming convension for these backups..... so far I just say something like "ProjectName_22_May_2006"....is this adequate?

Thank you very much!

Hello there!

I`m a PC Tech. And you would be my 10% top favorites customers!!

Yep! Nobody do care about their own data, until it`s too late. And I get the blame if I don`t do it for them. What a job!

Here is my recipe:

First rule: Like old fashioned English say: Do not put all eggs in the same basket...or something like that.

Translation: If you do your backup in the same computer...is sure that something will go wrong with its hardware before you notice (Murphy law for PC)

You need an External Mass Storage (translated: External Hard Disk, usb or Network type, or other pc on the same LAN). If your data is SO important, multiple-backup is still unexpensive.

Second rule: Manual Backup...? Forgedaboudit !! You betcha You`ll never do it.

Now. Automatic backup + Free = Goood...
But, always check once in a while (1 a week or as many time you consider) that backup is being doing properly.

I use this free edition software (freeware as author says) for many years:

http://www.matpie.drw.net/PBSystems/products/taskzip/TZip.ht ml

You can use multicopy option (up to 99 copies, recomended only 6 for each day of the week, 1 is count as the actual copy and would be 7)

The good thing about multicopy, if a file got corrupted and you noticed 3 days after it started to happen, well, you still have some good copies of it.

It will autorecycling (means it will use only 7 last copies), so it will never fill up the hosting disk easily.

And always recycle is environment friendly. (...it`s a joke...)

You can use compressed (zip) backup (Highly recomended).

You cannot use multicopy with NON-compress copy.

This software keep 2 logs: 1 for backup done, 1 for errors backing up (like lost network, you forgot the pc powered off during vacation, etc)

Final note: If you have some data that its own software will be permanently on memory 24hs, you have to use this software from another pc through the network and pulling a copy of this data file from there.
Reason?: Because that running software will lock locally that file and it won`t allow no other software to use it.

Question are always free.. call at 3am for data loss, it`s not.

Your backup options and strategy depend upon several things:

1. How much data do you need to back up?
2. What is the data worth to you?
3. Do you have a safe place to store your back ups?

You may want to consider an automated back-up service so that you have your data stored off site. Depending upon your backup needs, an online backup solution might make sense.

Here is what I recommend to the people that use my service:

• Do a full backup at least once each month
• Do incremental backups daily
• Do differential backups once per week.

A full backup means backing all up the data you want to backup to an external system - whether it be tape, CD, DVD, external drive or an online/remote backup server like I provide.

A full backup will capture all of the selected data, whereas an incremental backup will capture files that have been modified since it was last backed up.

Differential backup will capture all files that have changed since the last full backup.

At the very least, get your backups off site.  NEVER store your tapes, disks or other media at the same location as your server/PC.  If you must do this, have a redundant off-site copy.

 

 

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Scott Watson.::.

Acme Data Online Backup Service     

Don`t Wait Until It Is Too Late To Recover Your Data