| 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 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.
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 requesting membership of our private white
paper area for I.T. Professionals.
"If you don't get it on paper,
you probably won't get it"
backupanytime, a team that makes and keeps commitments.
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