Backups

Backing Up Your Data

Be wise. Backup your data. You will lose your data someday (if you have not already). We recommend backing up your data at least twice per day in addition to RAID mirroring. Backing up your data twice daily means you will only lose a half day's data if your server fails. Backup procedures and hardware should have the following features:

DAILY. Twice daily. Thrice daily. Backup until you reach a level where you won’t mind losing the data that has not been backed up. See also MIRRORING below.

GRANDFATHERING. Their should be several generations of backups available.

MIRRORING is the writing data to two or more hard drives simultaneously so that if one of the drives fails, the other will continue to work without loss of data. Even if you have mirroring, you still need another removable off-site data backup. Why? Because your entire file server may get a virus and wipe out your hard drive. The mirrored drive will do the exact same thing! Or what if you mistakenly delete a file?!? It will be deleted off the mirrored drive also!

OFF-SITE. Take a copy of your backup data off-site. Even if you keep your data in a fire-proof safe, that doesn’t guard against super-heated fire, an earthquake, or theft.

REMOVABLE. Think USB hard drives or compact flash cards or removable 3.5” hard drive trays.

TAPE. While backup tape drives might be suitable for some businesses, they are not ideal for management companies. Tape is too slow and too expensive now that hard drive prices are so low.

TESTING. Try to recover your data once in a while, just to see if your backups actually work.

Back to Support Page Back to Hardware List