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In some situations it may critical that you don't have any downtime caused by data failure. While this is almost impossible to achieve after certain disaster scenarios, you can protect yourself from a common data loss i.e. hard drive failure. There is a system called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), that can be used to improve the data reliability and/or throughput of data within a system. In the diagram above, it shows an a system utilising RAID1. With this configuration known as mirroring, all your system data is duplicated on to a second hard drive in real-time as the data changes. In the event of a single disk failure, there is an identical copy of the system available for the system to keep operating from. This type of protection should be seen as an addition to, rather than a replacement of other backup methods discussed here.

While we've discussed protecting your data from outside sources on the Prevention page, this still leaves a wide variety of ways in which you can lose your data. Many of these are unpredictable in nature, and the way to prepare for such a situation is to have copies of your data from which you can restore your system to how it was before the incident.

WHAT SHOULD YOU BACKUP?

Consider what is on your computer, an operating system (probably with a substantial amount of updates downloaded from the internet), applications, email, contacts, documents, photos, music, the list goes on. The time it takes to reinstall all these manually can be substantial. It is prudent to think about a complete system backup before anything else. This level of backup can then be used in conjunction with other more specific backups such as documents and email data only, which change more frequently.

HOW OFTEN?

This depends on how often your data changes. A good guide is to imagine a time period between initiating a backup and losing your data. How much time and effort is it going to take to recreate that data. If that prospect is undesirable then you need to think of a shorter timeframe between backups.

WHAT MEDIA SHOULD YOU USE?

This is another question that has no definitive answer. Each of the media types shown above have their advantages and disadvantages. They copy data at different rates, some are more suited to automatic backups and each have different stability ratings for archiving data over long periods of time.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH YOUR BACKUPS?

Depending on the number of copies you take, you should consider where you store your backups. If you are only making one copy of some files,there is little point in keeping it on a different folder of your hard drive if the hard drive fails. In the same way if you backup to tape, and place that tape in a drawer next to the computer, it will serve little purpose if there is a destructive fire. Consider storing a copy of your data remotely, or at the very least in a fire proof container.

 

Feel free to contact us if you have any enquiries regarding the information you've read, we're here to help.