Daily backup

Title : Daily backup
Audience : Small business principals and managers. Non technical staff with an interest in daily backup.
User I.T. Knowledge 3/10
Source : Http://www.backupanytime.com/whitepaper.htm
Posted : July 07
Reviewed n/a
Updated n/a
Copyright : backupanytime original content.
Redistribution as is : No permission required (with credits)
Modification : With written permission from backupanytime.

Daily Backup

Daily backup is a generic term from a time when manual data dump from one data source to another was considered a backup. Daily backup could refer to a user instigated or scheduled backup on any media. The purpose of this document is to make people aware of the dangers of data dump only and the possibility of thinking you have a backup when you do not.

Thinking you have a backup when you do not may sound most unlikely. It is however the most common “absolute data loss” scenario. Nobody (well very few people) would knowingly run a business without a backup. This obviousness lends itself to highlight that most people who lost data and can not retrieve it did actually believe they had a backup.

Today, the term “daily backup” is less meaningful given the varying methods and media which could be used albeit properly or improperly. Suffice to say that today, a manual data dump without encryption and compression is not a backup. It is a manual data dump.

A daily backup is not necessarily a backup taken during the day. The adjective “daily” pertains more to the period represented by the backup more then and time it is prepared at.
So, in time past a manual dump of data from a hard drive take at lunch time was considered a daily backup. Now it is considered neither daily nor a backup. An automated backup run at night through purpose coded software which captures all of todays data or increments all of todays data to existing backups is a daily backup and is so in the purest form if compressed and encrypted and part of a data management system.

This anomaly of actual words to description was not created intentionally. It is more a reflection on the advancement of technology and the way commonly used I.T. Terms stick.

Do you have a daily backup? This question is often answered incorrectly as yes. This however is not because of the anomaly of the words used but because of dangerous shortcomings in data management. Your understanding of the terms will offer no improvement on their own. The solution requires action and before a problem arises. Data backup is a non recursive issue. The best plan and system in the world will offer nothing unless implemented pre-incident.

In summary
If you dump live data on to a dvd or USB hard drive, you are not backing up. If you run your “backup” during the day while you are working, you are not running a daily backup. If your “backup” is not encrypted and compressed then it is only a “data dump”. Your concern however should not be conforming with the definition “daily backup” but actually implementing your backups with a system which effectively manages the information life cycle of your business. No matter how basic or deep your knowledge of computing, if you have even the slightest doubts about your backup, they are likely well founded. Call backupanytime today and we will do something about it in strict confidence tonight or at your earliest convenience.

If you found this document helpful you may like to visit www.backupanytime.com/whitepaper.htm or our website proper at www.backupanytime.com

If you are a system administrator and would like technical details please register your interest on our contact page www.backupanytime.com/contact.htm requesting membership of our private white paper area for I.T. Professionals.

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