Are you backing up correctly?

Greetings,

I have always stressed to my clients the importance of backing up their data on a regular basis. I have setup many backup systems that automatically backup what we believe to be the critical data. I have also suggested that on occasion, we test the backup to make sure that it works and that we can recover from a loss.

Yesterday, a client lost a folder from his Outlook Express inbox. This folder contained hundreds of email dating back over 2 years. It just mysteriously dissapeared. Not a problem though, we had been backing up the Outlook Express folder for the last year. Restoring the lost folder would be a breeze.

A breeze would have been nice. This was more like a Tropical Storm with hurricane gusts. We had been backing up the data everyday. We have two removable hard drives that are rotated daily and the previous night's backup is take off site. In theory we should have had two good backups of the OE files.

The first problem started with the previous night's backup. There wasn't one. No explanation from the person responsible, it just wasn't available. Not to worry, in addition to the removable drives, I has set up a super secret (only I knew about it) backup drive in a locked room.

This drive had the backup folders that I thought we needed. The files were located and restored and .... the directory was still missing. It seems that the missing folder had been missing for a couple of days, and nobody thought to tell me about it.

We retrieved the second removable drive and the files were where they were supposed to be and everything was restored. We weathered the storm with just a few bumps and bruieses.

I did however learn that there were several flaws in our backup procedures. We are backing up only the files that have been changed, or created since the last backup. We are using a program that syncronizes the files on the backup with the files on the server.

Syncronization works well for most types of files. You open a file, make changes, save it and the program knows that the copy on the server is newer than the copy on the backup drive and replaces it. Not really a problem most of the time.

With a program like Outlook Express, you have a great deal of data that accumulates and grows on a daily basis. Occasionally, you delete things that you should not delete, and by the time you realize it, your backups have been overwritten with more current versions of the files.

Are we backup up the right things at the right times, or are we just backing up our current files.

We need to take a good look at this.

Let me know what you think,

Marc