Backup Anytime

How far you should go with regard to data protection used to be a personal choice and was based on perception and budget. In a time (not too long ago) when many very small businesses had near no backup solution and depend on the occasional internal manual data dump, larger companies took great steps to protect their data.

An example is Microsoft which has always taken a worst case scenario attitude. It is common for larger companies to suffer detrimental press coverage (and worse) as a consequence of even a minor data infringement. While Microsoft suffer from comment abuse across the web from bloggers unhappy with software or bundling, their is (considering their long held global presence) little real comment or info regarding Microsoft data outages. Their worst case scenario attitude has paid off.

So what use is this information to small business?

Given significant advances in technology boundaries and even greater cost reductions, many smaller companies are simply unaware of the level of data protection they can avail of for minimal investment relative to what significantly weaker protection would have cost in time past.

The problem here is that small business (in the absence of professional advice) commonly search for and find cheap products based on obvious price cuts rather than suitable solutions in markets they are not familiar enough with to recognise greater value.

An example would be a very small business operator who purchases a large volume hard drive in Maplin, PC world or even Aldi based on an awareness that this drive is significantly reduced in price. This information is obvious as a consequence of advertising but that does not make the purchase suitable to the problem being addressed. The likelihood is that the 500 Gig hard drive is capable of storing significantly more data then the purchaser needs. Worse still it could encourage the owner to “backup” irrelevant data thus complicating the store for index purposes and risking non compliance with data protection legislation.

All that aside, the proud owner of the new device still does not have a proper backup system. The external drive amounts to a high risk bulk store and could bring with it a false confidence which could further increase risk.

So what should our man be doing?

He should ask himself the following questions.

How much data do I need to backup?

Do I have a safe place to keep it?

Will I have the time to manage it without exception?

What type of indexing and searchability do I want to en-corporate?

How far back do I want to Be able to restore?

What (data wise) is the worst possible thing that could happen?

Armed with these questions he should approach a number of data backup specialists and seek advice followed by quotations. So far he has spent nothing and he will gain an insight in the the value available in the quality end of the market and will have been able to compare them.

He doesn’t have to go with any of them but either way he will be informed.

In summary

A big hard drive is not a backup, it is a big hard drive. If you disagree with this comment you should seek professional advice before disaster strikes. You don’t have to drop, lose or break your external drive. It will (as an absolute certainty) fail one day all on it’s own.