ChooseWhat’s Web Development Associate, April Coburn, had the distinct task of figuring out how to back up our server and all of its data. While she completed this daunting assignment and found solutions that meet our business needs, she says that many businesses don’t necessarily see the importance at backing up their systems.
“Since we’re moving to a paperless society, you should be aware that all of your data can be erased with just one click,” Coburn says.
What is Data Backup?
Simply, data backup is the storing of your files located on your personal computer or server on another location, either online, in a cloud computing service, or through a physical tool, such as an external hard drive.
- If you’re using an online program, backing up can either be scheduled or it can run constantly.
- For external hard drives, you will need to set up a Windows Task Scheduler to back up your files during specific times.
Why Should You Back Up Your Data?
Coburn says that losing data can happen to everyone, but if you’re a small business you need a backup system. She cites a recent example of an online fax provider, GoFaxer, who lost all of its customers’ information and took an entire month to get back online, losing a lot of customers in the process.
“If they had a backup system in place, they could have been up and running in no time,” Coburn says. “But because they didn’t have a backup system, they were out of business for a whole month. If you don’t have a backup in place, it could cost you your entire business.”
Make a Plan
The first step in determining which backup system to use is to determine what and how often you’ll need to back up.
- How large is your server?
- How many files do you need to back up?
- How often do these files change? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?
You will need to consider this before choosing a backup service and figuring out how often to schedule its backup.
If you have a lot of data, Coburn says you should consider a cloud computing service because they charge less per gigabyte of data. Plus, the benefit of a cloud service is that they save your files in different places, so if one place goes down your files are still safe.
Pick a Tool
What should you look for when picking a tool?
- Look for a company that’s been around a while and is well-known.
- Check how their backup service affects your server’s speed and how it backs up files. If you have a lot of data, you want to be able to schedule your backup; some services, such as DropBox, don’t give you this option.
- Pick a trusted company. Check with the Better Business Bureau.
- Do you need more than one version of a file? Some companies will allow you to keep more than one version of a file.
- How many different ways do you want to access your data? Most online backup services have iPhone and/or Android apps for you to pull up files directly on your phone.
- Look for great customer service. You can’t wait for an email when you need access to your data.
Tools to consider:
Have a Plan B (and C)
Having an online backup service isn’t enough, though. What if one of these services went down? You could still lose all of your data. Coburn says it’s important to have two online solutions to back up your files. This only costs roughly 10 bucks a month, and “you can’t put a price on lost data,” she says.
While an online backup service is a great way to go, Coburn also recommends using an external hard drive. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can easily store all of your data in a convenient spot. However, she also warns that a natural disaster could easily destroy your hard drive, so you should have more than one hard drive and rotate them offsite.
Make sure to manually schedule your hard drives to manually back up your data. For PCs, you will use the Windows Task Manager to schedule these. Macs use the Activity Monitor.
Just note that the initial backup can take a couple of days depending on the size of your server, but once it’s setup the backup service will only look for revisions and shouldn’t take too long to back up.
“Backup services are really a small price to pay to know that your files are safe at all times,” Coburn says. “And, if you’re a business you have no excuse for not having a backup plan.”
first I want to thank you for this article and I have to totally agree with you , everybody should keep their data backed up and I prefer if online more because it’s much safer and you’ll have the ability to access it anytime anywhere. As a small company owner I did a lot of research for a reliable solution also offers unlimited storage, tell recently I found Timeline Cloud; they have a 2 week trial so I signed up and so far everything is going well. They offer really good Business plan with the Cloud Disaster Recovery feature. Definitely recommend checking them. You can check them here: timelinecloud.com
I think online backup offers like Mozy is really useful and convenient.
That would be enough to most people to backup their most important documents (not photos/music/videos) on a distant server with regular backup schedules, instead of using an external hard drive and sometimes forget to do the backup.