Back it up!

Written with the assistance of Jack Barker from The Document Centre & Offsite Backup.

Why backup?

What to backup?

Where to backup to?

Power protection

Why backup?

Everyone that uses a computer will suffer data loss at some time. Rarely a day goes by when I don't hear a tale of woe from someone who gets a virus, a Hard Drive fails, computer won't boot for some reason, computer gets stolen, lightning strike and other natural disasters and the list goes on. Sure, insurance can protect against many of these situations but losing data can be far more costly than the loss of the hardware. Recovering data from a corrupt or broken hard drive can be a very costly exercise too. Paying a techy for several hours to recover data from a Hard Drive with a software problem will generally cost from a few hundred dollars, but recovering data from a Hard Drive with a physical problem will start at around $3000.00 and go way up from there depending on the fault.
Ok, how do we protect our computer from data loss? We back up. We copy our data to a safe place. A safe place is preferably away from our computer and off the premises, safe from fire, flood, burglars, spiteful partners/employees and any other circumstances that can go wrong. A fireproof safe is a good idea, but bear in mind if your backups are on CDs or similar, the melting point of plastic is considerably lower than the burning point of paper.
Regular scheduled backups are an essential part of any business risk management strategy, just like insuring your premises against fire or your car for accidental damage. The biggest cause of data loss is because businesses have no back up plan or do not back up often enough.

What to backup?

Ask yourself where you would be if suddenly you lost your accounting data, documents like letters and spreadsheets, emails, databases and so on. (Don’t kid yourself your customers will phone you and offer to pay you if they don’t get a bill from you). Statistics show that businesses that lose critical computer data go broke in the following 12 months.
A good practice for a home or sole user is to keep all of your important data in the one place on your computer. eg The My Documents folder. This way you only have the one folder of data to remember to back up. For businesses with a computer Network, all important data should be saved on a central file server and backups made from that on a daily basis.
Tip: You can change the Store folder for Outlook and Outlook Express to a folder inside your My Documents folder so that you also back up emails when you back up the My Documents folder. Another useful practice is to set your email client to a leave a copy on the mail server for a few days. That way if something dreadful happens, you can re-download the last few days' emails.

Where to backup to?

The size of your organisation and the type and volume of data you have will determine the best way to protect yourself, but the main points to consider are:
a) When you lose your data you will want to restore it back, so the system has to be reliable and someone has to know how to use it.
b) The system should be as automated and straightforward as possible so that you know it is going to happen each day when it should.
c) Cost of the backup system vs cost of rebuilding the lost data manually. eg I once lost a fortnight's worth of accounting data which took at least another fortnight for staff to rebuild it. Add up wages to input the data again and the cost of lost productivity and it's not hard to see that I would have saved money even with a more expensive backup system in place.

Most removable media comes with software utilities to specify what data you want to backup and then set it to a schedule, so that the only thing remaining is to remember to change the tape/drive/CD etc and/or take it off premises regularly.

	Spare Hard Drive. This is the most basic option and involves copying your data to a second hard drive. This can be a hard drive in a removable rack so that you can swap it and/or take it away with you after hours (bearing in mind these are often criticised for causing overheating problems), or an External Hard Drive (perhaps a USB Hard Drive in a networkable device like the Linksys NSLU2), or even just across to another PC on the Network. A great free utility for this is EZBackitup. EZBackitup copies specified directories across to another Hard Drive or other media. It retains the original directory structure and doesn't compress so it's very easy to retrieve the data again, and you can set it to a schedule or multiple schedules. I find this great to do anyway for stuff I'm always working on like spread sheets and web pages as I can quickly and easily revert to yesterday's backup copy if I muff something up. Pros/Cons: These options work on the basis of having a 2nd copy of your data. Having a copy on a Network Drive is great for most situations but doesn't cover for theft or natural disasters. If copying to a removable drive you have to remember to take it off premises, and Hard Drives are easily damaged if dropped. Cost: Little to no cost. Hard Drive racks are under $50.00 each (you'll need to buy two if swapping two Hard Drives regularly) and decent sized Hard Drives can be had for under $100.00 each new.
	CD burners are cheap & easy for making backups but be careful as they have their share of problems. Pros/Cons: Ever had problems copying music or program CDs? Well it easily happens to backup data too. When you find out the backup data is corrupt, it is usually at the very worst possible time. Rewriteable CDs will give you anything between 5 and 100 successful rewrites so take care and test restore frequently. Cost: CD Burners start at under $50.00 and CDs can cost as little as 20 cents each or less. Watch the cheaper ones though as they are far more susceptible to scratching and can tend to become unreadable after a few months. When burning a CD, the slower the burn the deeper and more permanent it will be.
	DVD Burners are an improvement on CD burners and take capacity from around 700MB up to a standard* 4.7 Gigabytes. (* There are many variations of burners and disk technology with the current World Record standing at 27 Gigabytes of data on a single disk) Pros/Cons: I frequently hear of difficulties installing DVD Burners and difficulties with actually getting a quality burn so the same problems as with CD burners remain to some extent. Cost: From around $150.00 for a really basic burner and from around $3.00 for a blank (4x) disk.
	Zip Drives: Zip Drives come in two basic forms - internal & external. Internal Zip Drives are usually cheaper and faster but involve some mechanical knowledge to fit. External Zip drives can be either USB or Firewire. Pros/Cons: The main drawback is the limited amount of data you can store on a Zip disk and it can be a pain if you need more than 1 disk to fit all of your backup as it means human intervention is required to swap the disks over. Zips come in various sizes, the mostly common being 100 & 250mb drives. Cost: From around $150.00 for basic 250mb Internal Zip with a spare disk, and from around $300.00 for a 750mb Firewire Zip Drive. Disks cost from around $20.00 each for 250mb disks.
	USB Memory Sticks: Memory Sticks come in sizes starting from 32mb of data capacity up to around 2 gigabytes (at the time of writing). Their ease of use and price could quite easily be seen to be responsible for the old 3.5 inch floppy's probable obsolescence and they're definitely giving Zip Drives a lot of curry too. Pros/Cons: Limited capacity but cheap & easy to use and extremely portable. Although I've heard of very few faults occuring with memory sticks that's not to say they don't happen, and when they do I'd imagine it would be fairly terminal and it wouldn't be easy to get the data back off them. For this reason I'd consider USB Memory sticks best used for carrying a copy of back up data and never entrusted with the sole copy of anything important. Cost: Starting from under $30.00 for the small ones, but the best value for money would be around the 128 & 256mb sized which would generally be from around $40.00 up to $100.00 or so. Expect to pay close to $350-400.00 for the big 2GB units.
	Orb Drives: use a metallic Disk and take capacity up to 2.2 Gigabytes and there's even a 5.7 gigabyte model. Orb drives come in Internet (ATAPI / IDE), SCSI (internal or external), USB or Firewire. These haven't been hugely popular in Australia for some reason but elsewhere were being touted as a possible replacement for CDs. Unfortunately manufacturers Castlewood appear to have filed for bankruptcy so the future is a little uncertain for these. Pros/Cons: Larger capacity than Zip Drives and metal disks with unlimited re-records. Cost: From just under $300.00 for an internal 2.2gb IDE Drive and from around $75.00 for a 2.2gb disk and around $130.00 each for 5.7gb disks.
	Rev Drives: Rev drives from Iomega are the next step up from Orb Drives and can take up to 90 gigabytes of data compressed onto their 35 gigabyte disk size. They can be purchased as either Internet (ATAPI / IDE), SCSI (internal or external), USB or Firewire. Pros/Cons: A fairly recent addition to the market with some obvious cost savings over tape systems for those people too big for a standard Zip Drive but balking at the cost of a full blown tape system. Metal disks mean long life and low susceptibility to loss or damage and can be formatted to suit either PC or Mac. Cost: Start from around $500.00 for an internal unit and from around $90.00 each for disks. (I thought these were such great value I've added them to my online shop)
	Tape drives have proved very effective over the years and come in all shapes and sizes. Make sure your technician sets your system up correctly and you regularly perform test restores. Much larger amounts of data can be stored on tapes, your technical support person should be able to advise what you need. Most tape drive backup systems can set to be run on a schedule, after hours. The tape is removed from the drive the next morning, the next tape inserted and yesterdays backup tape taken offsite the next night. Usually you need a daily tape (Mon-Thurs), a weekly tape (Friday) and a monthly tape (month end). Pros/Cons: You will need several tapes and these can seem expensive, and you should replace your tapes every 12 months as they do wear out. Cost: To set up a tape backup system could cost between $1400 to $4000 (including media).
	Internet based backups are a relatively new development and work well for small to medium sized businesses, lap top users etc. New compression and encryption technology enables large amounts of data to be sent securely (and cheaply) across the Internet to a remote secure server using a standard Internet connection. Backups are scheduled to occur automatically on a convenient schedule each day. No human intervention is required and this method is particularly suited to low skill level computer users. Data can be restored securely across the Internet or via encrypted secure CD. Internet based backups could be regarded as a secure method of backup as the encryption ensures only the owner can read his data.* Costs vary according to the amount of compressed data held but range from $15.00 a week to $20.00 a week on average. There are no media or hardware costs. Jack Barker from Off Site Backup who helped write a lot of this page provides an Internet based backup service.

* Note that most removable media is usually not secure. If you don’t keep them in a safe place offsite they can be read on any other computer, and then someone else knows your business.

Power protection.

A couple of quick notes on power protection as one of the biggest causes of data loss comes as a result of computer equipment being damaged by power surge or lightning strike.

	Surge Protectors: Every bit of wire that connects your PC to an external source should be surge protected. This includes power cables, phone lines, Cable Internet lines, data cables connected to outdoor WAPs, RF cables connected to antennas and so on. If it's a cable that comes from somewhere outside then there's a risk of it carrying a power surge through to your equipment. I have seen lots of blown Cable & ADSL modems, Dial-up modems, Fax Machines, PayTV Decoders, Routers, Network Switches and PCs that were all unplugged from power yet still were damaged during an electrical storm. You get what you pay for with surge protectors and the cheaper the device the less likely it is to respond fast enough to an actual surge. I have a preference for Belkin surge protectors because they're relatively inexpensive and come with a connected equipment warranty, which means Belkin will pay for any equipment (including data recovery) damaged by a surge if it's plugged into one of their surge protectors (carrying the advertised cover up to the limit specified), so they're a win/win product and I'm very excited to be able to now offer these via my online shop.
	UPS: (Uninterruptible Power Supplies). Ever spent hours on something on the PC only to experience a blackout and lose it all? Or ever had a blackout and suddenly the PC won't start up any more due to a damaged Hard Drive? These situations are where a UPS comes in very handy. Basically they're a battery backup that takes over during a loss of power. They start from under $200.00 for a basic unit that will have surge protection and provide a few minutes for everything to be saved and the computer shut down safely (all controlled automatically with the supplied software), up to units that supply varying amounts of power to keep PCs running until the mains power comes back on.

Note: For outdoor antennas fitted with gas filled lightning arrestors, bear in mind that these have a limited life and need to be replaced every couple of years for them to be effective.