What Makes a Great Data Backup Plan?
ByBy Paul Salmon (Contributed)
Take a minute to think about how much data is stored on your computer. Out of all of that data, how much can easily be replaced, and how much can’t be replaced if it was ever lost. Chances are you can probably think about a lot of your files that are irreplaceable, such as home videos or digital photos.
To protect that irreplaceable data, it is important to develop a great backup plan. In may not be sufficient to just copy your data to an external hard drive and forget about it. A great plan will ensure that if something were to happen to your computer or home, you will be able to recover all of your data.
There are several aspects about a backup plan that will ensure you won’t lose your data. Lets look at a few points, as well as how to implement them in your backup workflow.
Redundant Data When you backup your data it is important to now only make one copy of your files, but multiple copies. There may be times when you need to restore your data only to find out that your backup copy is corrupted. Having at least a second backup copy will provide you with two chances of restoring your data. To create multiple backups, you can easily burn your files to several optical discs or copy the files to an external hard drive and optical discs.
Move Data Offsite. When most people backup data, they simply copy the data to an external hard drive that sits next to their computer. If they use optical discs, they keep the discs beside the computer. It is important than when you do backup your files that you store the media in a separate location than your computer. If something were to happen to the building that houses your computer, all your data will be lost too. If your data was in a separate location, then you can easily retrieve your files when you need them. A good solution to moving your data offsite is to burn your data on optical discs and then physically store them elsewhere. USB flash drives are also good storage media for this as well as backing up online.
Automatically Backup Your Data One of the excuses people use when they don’t backup their data is that they are too busy and don’t have time. Unfortunately, sometimes when they do have time it is too late. When creating a plan, you should look into backup software that will automatically backup your data, or at least schedule a backup to run at a specific time. This will provide you with less worry about remember to protect your files. A good option is to use an online backup service that provides an application that will automatically backup your data.
Use High-Quality Media This point is especially true for optical discs. Optical discs, such as DVD discs, are notorious for be unreliable at times. This is usually because the discs are the cheap, bargain-basement variety that is sold anywhere. With computers you get what you pay for. When you want to protect your data, only use high-quality media, such as Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim, or Sony for optical discs, or Western Digital and Seagate for hard drives.
The Plan Needs to Work for You Implementing all the above points is part way to creating a great backup plan, but one last point needs to be mentioned: the plan needs to work for you. Everyone is different, so each plan needs to be different. Make sure that when you develop your entire backup workflow, that it meets your needs and is easy for you to work with. If you find it complex, or time-consuming, then your plan will need to be reworked or tweaked.
Paul Salmon currently maintains a blog that discusses both offsite backup storage and online data backup solutions.
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