Why backup your data ?

London and Manchester, UK
0870 140 2525

The Importance of an Online Data Backup strategy, for Commercial and Domestic Users

Your premises may get flooded, your equipment may experience an electricity surge or you might even be unlucky enough to format the wrong disk – surely this does not matter, you have a back up, right? Usually the answer is ‘no’. We find that hard drives suffer from a range of failures including mechanical, electronic, bad sectors and corruption that usually happen when you least expect it.

Sadly it happens to most of us at some time, either in a commercial or domestic capacity. Data in all forms is paramount to individuals and organisations for the smooth execution of every day life. That’s why this article will discuss the importance of data and consequently the steps Commercial and Domestic users should adopt to ensure their data is protected. It should be noted the retention of data should be justified in a company policy, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

The common question asked is “can the data be recovered?” and normally the answer is ‘yes’. However, there are occasions when it is not possible, i.e. when the hard drive has experienced a severe head crash thus rendering the disk drive useless, and the data that once existed irretrievable.

Regrettably many organisations adopt a backup policy that subsequently fails. This is usually due to a lack of planning, testing and evaluation. Assuming your data is backed up is ultimately negligent on your behalf. I have spoken with clients that invested a great deal of money into a backup solution but realised too late that the system in place did not execute correctly and subsequently lost their valued data.

Companies of any size that experience data loss will experience loss of earnings, which will increase for each hour the data is unavailable. Loss of earnings could be due to the decline in throughput where employees are taking longer to undertake their general tasks or the time required to reconstruct the data. Of course Data Recovery is an option; however this will still incur costs.

Unfortunately, if you are the backup manager or IT administrator and you fail to restore critical data within a realistic time frame your reputation and potentially your employment may cease to exist. Therefore you must ensure that appropriate contingences are in place to instigate a complete restore of critical data at any given point.
The Issues surrounding the current Methods of Data Backup.

A small percentage of home users will burn DVDs or CDs to backup their data, yet where do they keep the DVDs or CDs? Usually in the same building that is potentially vulnerable to burglary or fire. I would hazard a guess that the majority of home users do not backup their data and if they did it would not be offsite backup.

Most commercial outfits will backup their data in-house using tape storage, such as DLT. Tape backup usually requires an individual to monitor and maintain this type of system. Tapes, like hard disk drives, have a life expectancy and therefore should not be abused. It would be pointless using the same tape to backup your data to, especially if it has been used for many years. Thus this process of monitoring and renewing tapes is a cumbersome task, especially if you have a large system. It is inevitable that at some point either a mistake will be made or the system will fail. Plus, where are the tapes kept? It should also be noted that implementing a stable, efficient tape backup system is costly and could set you back thousands. Would you be surprised to know that more than 50% of tape backups fail?

Another method of data backup is using RAID. RAID stands for ‘Redundant Array of Independent Disks’. You can adopt different configurations of RAID some of which are known as RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. For the purpose of this article I shall discuss RAID 1 as an option for data backup. RAID 1 uses two hard disk drives. Drive ‘B’ is an exact duplicate of Drive ‘A’. Therefore, in the event of drive failure, there should still be one drive with the current system in tact. This method would be ideal for the smaller business, although impractical if the system was ever stolen. RAID may not be an alternative for a home user due to the expense involved.

The last method of data backup would be offsite data backup. It would appear this could be the way forward. It is relatively cheap, highly efficient and remotely accessible. Your data is usually backed up to a primary server that is replicated to a secondary server. The data tends to be encrypted and stored in a secure data centre guarded by security 24/7.

We naively assume that because a backup job completes, your data is stored on the desired medium up to the high standards you expect. Yet does anyone from your organisation actually check the data? In this digital age, data is absolutely vital – that’s why 80% of all businesses that suffer major data loss collapse.

Recommendations

Reviewing the various options of data backup, I shall now summarise the benefits of each and conclude with the ultimate backup solution.

It should be mentioned any individual or organisation should invest capital, research and time into their new backup project. If a backup project is hurried, ultimately mistakes may be made that will increase costs and deter progress. There are a wide range of backup products on the market, some of which are less effective than others.

DVDs, CDs and Pen Drives are suitable for transferring data; however I would not rely on this as my sole back up strategy. These devices are susceptible to damage or theft. DVDs and CDs take time to burn; the process requires human intervention. Benefits include reduction in costs; DVDs are inexpensive compared to the costs of a tape backup system.

Tape backup is expensive, time consuming and potentially vulnerable to degradation. Tapes have to be categorised and managed and archives should be kept securely offsite. Obviously this process relies heavily on human intervention, which may from time to time constitute to a number of mishaps causing major disruption.

RAID arrays are useful for business – yet not untouchable, as they are still susceptible to failure. However I feel RAID would not be suitable for the average home user. RAID implementations usually cost more to install and to recover data from.

In my opinion you need at least three copies of any individual file; the first being the original copy, the second being an offsite copy held on the first server which is consequently mirrored onto a second server creating the third copy. The third copy would ideally be located on a server in a different geographical location than the first server. By placing the third server in a different geographical location, the risks that the data could be compromised are reduced substantially. This synopsis of a data backup solution reflects that of an offsite backup solution. This in my opinion is by far the most impressive solution available.