What's the best backup option?

[gelcreative]

Hi everyone,

Here I am with a hard drive full of very interesting client folders, some as large as 10Gigs (video etc.). All these folders are stored and worked off a 160Gb external hard drive. I often (not often enough)backup to DVD - then promptly leave the DVDs in the same office as the hard drive (doh!)

So I need to make an action plan...... what would anyone else recommend as the best way to keep these files backed up safely and efficiently? I often go back to old files to get bits and pieces from them... so they need to be easily accessible.

Any ideas? Tape backup? Online backup?

[Mac 5]

Buy a small fireproof safe to store your backups in.

[AzGoldPros]

Gel,

You've not said what you are trying to protect them against specifically so I will discuss a broad range application. You and Mac 5 are on the right track but you have to really go further. Forget DVD backup, as big as your files are they can take forever to copy over/rewrite etc. Use your external USB hard drive and expand to 2 or 3 of them for safety. You can add as many as USB outlets you can expand your computer to so this is not a problem. Cost is around $150-$250 each so that is not a problem if you are being paid decently to do whatever it is you are doing for your customers. Now let’s discuss the storage solution. If you have 2 or more you should update/backup only 1 of the drives every week. This helps protect you if you should get a Trojan/virus/bug etc and you discover it after you've backed it up onto one of the hard drives. At least 1 or 2 of the others will be "clean" to backup from when you've cleaned your computer. This takes care of virus/Trojan problems.

Now, the safe is good if you want to protect against theft but a small fire proof safe will only protect you against a basic fire, not theft. Gone is gone no matter what the cause. So you need to get a big fireproof safe. One too big for a man to just lift it on a dolly and wheel it out the back door. Be sure to lag bolt it to the floor and wall joists from the inside access holes so it cannot be moved without serious carpentry work which will foil 99.9999% of all thieves who try to remove it physically. This will help protect you against theft and fire and to a small degree against EMP pulses should one occur near you from either natural or man-made occurrences. I backup on my network of computers but this does not protect me against theft, fire, virus/Trojans etc or EMP problems. It's a usable backup for most ordinary uses, but all my pertinent data is for web sites which are already backed up on many servers around the world so I am not as worried about them. You do not want pertinent client data on servers around the world most likely, lol, so this is your best alternative. Backing up to a harddrive is much quicker and easier to store and move around etc than using the piles of DVDs you'd need to store the same amount of data and the time to do so. You can find a large enough fire safe between $1,200 - $2,000 US dollars making this whole scenario possible for around $1,500 - $2,500 USD depending on the final cost of each part and how many drives you ultimately buy. In all honesty, this is a very acceptable expense and here in the U.S. we can write it all off on our taxes as a business expense. I would think you could do the same in the U.K. as well but I am not familiar with the income tax laws there so that's something for you to explore. This solution is a true and real business solution for people who are really serious about backup like CPA's, Accountants, Tax Preparers, Financial Planners, Stock Advisors etc. who's clients info are the daily income. Anyone else might consider this overkill as they really don't need that kind of protection but if you have the goose that lays the golden eggs you can never buy too much security. I know as I have many GOLD mining claims and thieves are everywhere. The only thing in my favor is they still have to dig it out of the ground! LOL A lot more work than just grabbing a hard disk etc. and I don't have to worry about fire or EMP pulses when dealing with dirt and GOLD. Hope this helps you.

[DrTandem1]

Originally Posted by gelcreative

Hi everyone,

Here I am with a hard drive full of very interesting client folders, some as large as 10Gigs (video etc.). All these folders are stored and worked off a 160Gb external hard drive. I often (not often enough)backup to DVD - then promptly leave the DVDs in the same office as the hard drive (doh!)

So I need to make an action plan...... what would anyone else recommend as the best way to keep these files backed up safely and efficiently? I often go back to old files to get bits and pieces from them... so they need to be easily accessible.

Any ideas? Tape backup? Online backup?

Effective redundancy requires that one copy will survive whatever another copy does not. For instance, you quite wisely point out the error of having both copies in the same general physical proximity. For most uses, a hard drive and a DVD or CD-ROM will be sufficient. However, more valuable data and hard work will require more protection.

What I would recommend is regularly backing-up client data (and yours) by keeping it in at least two physically distant locations. Thus disasters such as fires, floods, earthquakes, etc. are unlikely to corrupt all copies. Once a copy has been corrupted, it is important to create a replacement copy for it immediately.

Other places to store client data is on their own servers, if they are not maintained where you keep their back-up files currently. This will allow for easy access. Lastly, their are companies that provide this service.

[gelcreative]

Thanks for all your tips! Mainly I'm just backing up work I've done for clients, website designs, and their raw material, CD-ROM designs etc. I've been quite happy with the hard drive/DVD option, but I thought there might have been a really good alternative, like some sort of online backup service that would access my computer and back it up overnight.

I already lost a whole client folder when I accidently deleted the folder before I had burnt the DVD (doh!) and learnt my lesson, thank goodness that was 2002, so hopefully the client won't be wanting to repeat that job again.

I'm not really protecting it against anything other than loss! Anyway, thanks everyone, I'll keep working on my current system but make sure to take one copy away from the office! (Not really sure that my parents would want me to drill holes in their walls to secure a safe - as that's where my office is!).

[ThatAdamGuy]

Is anyone doing online backup here? If so, what have been your experiences? Any recommendations?

[ADAM Web Design]

Change your nick, ThatAdamGuy. There's only room for one of us here. You see the MVP under my nick? That means I OWN our name. ;)

Nah, just messin'.

Seriously, what I usually set up for clients is a tape or CD backup job that runs once per month and backs up EVERYTHING on a drive. I tell them to put in a tape/CD that they only intend to use once and to store it offsite (usually in a safe deposit box.)

It's pretty inexpensive and it works.

[chad19]

You might want to buy some storage space with a company like XDrive which lets you assign a drive letter to your offsite storage. Then backups are a simple as drag-and-drop.

A cheaper option might be to set up a FTP or WebDAV server from a home computer and then use the freeware tool NetDrive (by Novell) to assign your home storage to a drive letter at work.

I did this the other way around with a freeware copy of Back2zip on the remote computer which fetches modified copies of documents from my work computers.

[ppanwar]

A lot of people I know who have used Xdrive. Its quiet a good service for backing up your files. Atteast that way you don't have to worry about theft or fire. Let someone else take that responsibility

Even if you go with an online option, I would still recommend you to backup one copy and keep it at a different location.

[Jabber_uk]

I know this is a bit old now but I thought I would reply anyway ;)

A good point to consider is:

Say you deleted a file one day, then did a back up the following day, but because you overwrite old backups with new ones (hey surely thats ok?) you have effectively lost the 'deleted' file.

So a good plan would be (if doing daily backups):
Monday - Thursday (Differential backups which only back up files since last FULL backup) or Monday - Thursday could be Incremental Backup which are files which have changed since last backup (FULL, Differential or Incremental)

Friday being the FULL BACKUP


Another point to think about is while backups should be easy to do and not require much in the way of manpower this can be dangerous. I had a customer (a District Council in the UK who were doing backups of their 14 Leisure Centres' SQL database. The problem was they were not checking and consequently they lost 9 months of data due to a server failure. The moral of that story is yeah great make your backup easy but makes sure it works!

Also if you have several strategies in place then if one fails you have other backups to fall back on. For instance my data at my office is on a Mirrored set of Disks, I take FULL tape backups once a week (which go home with me) and in addition each of us who work there take the data we have been working on home on our USB pens. Since most of our work is web based then the customers files are on the domain for that customer and easily acccessible by FTP.

Once in a while I backup the data area to another server through the LAN too. Not that I am paranoid of course!

[gelcreative]

Jabber : I can confirm : You're paranoid !!

Thanks everyone for the tips. I might think about the tape backup and take it home option. Especially seeing as I spilt coffee on my external hard drive holding ALL my data the other day! Thank goodness it survived the scalding!

The online backup option just seems way too expensive for all the graphic/video data I hold. £10 per month per GIG, I think NOT!

Any idea how much tape backup devices/software etc will set me back? (I'm in UK).

Ta

[shadowolf]

Ok many of the above option will work. I partner with a company called Lasso logic the have onsite and off site remote storage options. To give you an idea remote storage will cost about $10.00 per gig of raw data. If you would like to talk more about this option e-mail me at mrhoades@shoppcdirect.com I'm a direct rep for lasso Logic. You can look into other remote offers but the prices will be about double what I'm telling you. Lasso team up with IBM Data centers to offer this program. So they back your data up at two locations for extra protection. They also have an external drive as well that start at 160 gigs and goes up to 1 terabyte.

[ppanwar]

Hi Shadowolf,

Is that $10 per gig per month? Do they give discounts if you buy more gigs.

I am looking for a good online backup solution. Some hosting providers provide 75 GB for $100 a year. Just wondering would that be a good option for backup