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Newsletter #2 - Back It Up! |
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The question isn't whether a computer drive will fail, but when...
Therefore, any information that you would be sad to lose, needs to be saved in more than one place.
That's the essence of a back up procedure. You absolutely, positively, must back up your essential business data. And not just once. Someone in your office needs to take responsibility for the backup. So decide ahead of time whose head will roll when a drive fails, and you lose weeks or months worth of business information. Then come up with a schedule, put a procedure in place, and have someone check on the system, daily, with a thorough inspection of the backup data done at least monthly, and an archive kept at another location. That may sound melodramatic, but consider flood, fire, and how much robbers like to steal computers, and you'll realize remote storage just makes good sense. The alternative is to figure out how you will run your business, with all the data that you have stored in one place . . . gone. Below is the essential information we feel you need to decide on a backup procedure for your critical business information. |
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The world is temporary. Despite all efforts to the contrary,
change will happen; we all die and so will ALL equipment.
Eventually the best made hard drive, with all your data on it will stop working.
This is an absolute.
So... if you like your data, back it up. RAID: There are many clever ways to protect your data. RAID is one of the best of them: time-tested. RAID is an acronym for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks." There are several RAID levels. The most useful are RAID 1 and RAID 5. RAID 1 - also known as mirroring - is the practice of using two hard drives for each write. That way if you loose a drive the other is a completely up-to-date copy of your data. You can then replace the defective drive and re-mirror. Upside: Fast. Downside: Expensive per MB 100% overhead. And you can't take the data off-site. No over-write protection either (more on what that means later). RAID 5 needs at least three drives, and - funny as it sounds - the more drives you have, the more economical it is. Data is written across all the drives and a special parity bit is written on each drive so that the array can function with one drive dead. When you replace the defective drive the parity bit is used to rebuild the array. Upside: Most inexpensive per MB RAID level and almost as fast as RAID 1, faster in some cases. Downside: You still can't take the data off-site. And you can still over-write, or replace good data with bad. RAID is great for protection against losing a single drive. However it is not a 100% safe. A fire or the loss of 2 drives will render your data irretrievable. Therefore you should also backup to a remote drive or removable media. Point-in-Time snapshots: Your system can take a picture of all the data on the drive at a predefined time and preserves it for specified time period. Several of these snapshots can be supported at a time giving a user the option of going back in time to retrieve lost or changed files. I have configured a snapshot for every 3 hours, Friday and monthly. Upside: You will rarely have to restore from tape. Downside: Can't take the data of-site. Snapshots can fail, and they take up a lot of disk space when a file system changes frequently. Backup strategies: Data should be well organized so that you can easily find the root directory of the data you want to protect, i.e., \\server\data or \\server\users For smaller installation you may wish to simply copy the data directory to another computer. Beware that all files must be closed (no one using them) in order to successfully back them up. Therefore, Its a good idea to have everyone logout at night. Upside: Fast and inexpensive. Downside: Data remains on-site leaving you at risk of fire or other catastrophic failure. Sophisticated backup software programs have agents that can backup open files and databases. Manage your tape libraries and rotation schedules. Warn you about failures and many other features. Upside: Comprehensive and easy to administer. Downside: Expensive and hard to setup. Your staff has worked hard on this data. Costs to create it include salaries, benefits and overhead. Protecting your data may seem expensive and time-consuming, but recreating it from scratch can bankrupt a company! No matter how you decide to protect your data be sure that you monitor the process and regularly test recovery procedures to assure your systems are working as designed. |
| Remember, it's not a question of IF; it's a question of WHEN. |
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The critical element to any business is data.
Whether it's client information or employee payroll, your data is important.
Fast access is important; so you invest in the new fab RAM and a speedy hard drive,
which is not bad at all. We all just tend to overlook the
reality that this wonderful technology is fallible.
Sometimes you get the permanent blue screen of death, and all your data is lost.
Without a proper back up and restore routine, I foresee sleepless nights. There are many things to consider in the back-up arena:
Types of backups: Essentially there are three types of backup procedure: full, incremental and differential. A full backup saves a copy of every file, as the name implies, but it takes the longest to perform and requires the most media. An incremental backup only saves files that have been changed since the last backup, a simple way to protect any changed or new data. Which is nice but to restore your system to its most recent state, should it freeze, you have to restore your full backup plus all the incremental backups. It is the quickest and uses the least media but the time it takes to restore your system is greatly impacted. A differential backup is a bit different, it saves a copy of every files that has been changed since the last full backup. The media usage is somewhere in-between, same with the backup time but it does make the restore easier with just a full backup and the most recent differential backup. The idea is to match your backup procedure with your data storage needs and your media limitations, we'll discuss those later. Backup schedules: What timetable is right for your needs? Home user that just surf the web, play games and balance the checkbook, can probably get away with a full backup once or twice a year and incremental backups monthly or bimonthly. Small office users need a much different timetable. Full backups should be done on a weekly basis, to insure data is restored to its most recent state. Differential or incremental backups should be done nightly, depending on your memory allowance. One weekly full backup should be removed from the office, so in case catastrophe hits, you will still have a copy of your data, and your system can be restored. Here are two more important rules that may help. Always perform a full backup when making any substantial changes to your OS (operating system) or any applications. Also perform a full backup before making any substantial hardware changes (changing processors or chipsets). Backup media: Media is your most limiting factor. We would all love to have a full copy pop right up there when the system dies, but that takes many many gigs of data storage media space and unwanted hours of computer up time. Major storage options include: floppy disk, zip disks, CD, DVD, online storage, and hard drive/RAID systems. CD storage media is relatively inexpensive, CD-R (entire disk may be filled once, but not all at once) disk 100 pack is about $30. CD-RW (CD-rewritable capable of being written to multiple times) disk 10 pack is about $35, and internal CD-RW drives range from $60 to $180. Here's where we have to discuss storage capacity, one disk only holds 700Mb of information, and depending on your storage needs, that could mean a lot of disks. Conversely, the DVD storage option is more pricey but with more storage space per disk. 4.7Gb DVD-R disks go for $35 to $40 for ten and 4.7 GB DVD-RWs are around $50.00 for ten. A DVD-R/CD-RW drive costs about $280 and DVD-RWs run in the range of $300 to $800. Hard drive storage sounds nice with 40Gb of storage space costing about $90; 80Gb $130; and 120Gb about $200. There are also removable drives for added security. The only real draw backs are that any particular drive has a limit and data juggling is needed once the drive starts to reach capacity. They also freeze and the data is irretrievable but that may happen with any disk ill-properly handled or drive misused. Finally there are online data storage warehouses, where they pretty much handle all your needs, from setting up the backup routines to tech support throughout a system restore. Monthly charges for that type of service run anywhere from 6 GB at $80, to 18Gb at $225, to 30Gb $300, to 75Gb at $625, to 120Gb at a whopping $900, and 600Gb for a mere $2,500. The information given here will not make you a backup expert overnight. We recommend you have an experienced technician assist in setting up your system, and monitor it on a monthly schedule to prevent catastrophic data loss. |
| peace. J |
Estimated costs to backup 1 to 100 gigabytes of data, daily for three years.
| MEDIA | 1 Gb | 10 Gb | 50 Gb | 100 Gb |
| CD-R | $302 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| CD-RW | $110 | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| DVD-RW | $305 | $347 | n/a | n/a |
| RAID 1 40Gb Hard Drives | $180 | $180 | n/a | n/a |
| RAID 1 80Gb Hard Drives | $260 | $260 | n/a | n/a |
| RAID 5 80Gb Hard Drives | n/a | $650 | $650 | n/a |
| RAID 5 120Gb Hard Drives | n/a | $1,000 | $1,000 | $1,000 |
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Hope this helps! Cheryl |
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