Backing Up Your Servers and PC’s

Imagine if there was a fire that wiped out your entire office and the next day you walked up to the smoldering embers.  What would you do?  If there was no recent backup tape (tested and known to be good) offsite or in a true fireproof safe, the answer most likely is go out of business.  Even if a physical disaster doesn’t occur, hard drives are mechanical devices that can and will fail.  It is only a matter of time.  You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many backup tapes!

Most businesses have networks.  All user-created data should be stored on the network and not on the local PC.  You must tell your users to do this, because 95% of the time, local hard drives are not backed up regularly whereas network servers generally are backed up frequently.  If an application requires that information be stored locally, then that hard drive must be backed up regularly as well.

Novell and Microsoft have their own backup programs.  Computer Associates makes a product called ArcServeIT that is compatible with NetWare and Windows NT and is probably the most popular backup software on the market.

Beachwood Systems recommends a “Grandfather-Father-Son” tape rotation where there are daily, weekly, and monthly tapes that are rotated so that it is possible to go back in time to get a folder or file from several months ago.  This is important because sometimes data gets corrupted and nobody finds out because it is accessed infrequently.