Best Practices – Where do we backup our data to?

In the previous posts we have figured out what data we need to back up and we have learned that a program that provides the ability to synchronize our data is a good way to go.

We now need to find a place to synchronize our data to. We also have to plan on whether or not we are going to take a backup offsite. We should also take a look at who will be responsible for making sure that the backups have completed successfully, and if the are to be taken offsite, that they actually are taken offsite.

The amount of data that we are backing up will play a very important part of deciding what type of device we use. I try to stress to my clients that they should have both onsite and offsite backup devices. Redundancy is a good thing. Let’s take a look at what our options are.

Internal Hard Drive – If you have just a single computer it is possible to add a second hard drive to your machine and use that drive as a backup device

Local Area Network – If your office has a LAN you can configure the program to synchronize you data to a shared network drive. Shared drives could be on another machine, a file server, or a dedicated Network Attach Storage device.

USB Hard Drive – Many companies now sell a self-contained USB hard drive that you can attach to any computer system.

Removable Hard Drive – You can purchase a package that includes a hard drive tray and a docking bay the stays in your computer. You then can copy your data to the hard drive and then remove it from the docking bay.

CD/DVD – You can burn your data to a CD or a DVD. I prefer to use the read only instead of the read-writes.

USB Flash Drives – If you have a limited amount of data you can use these flash drives for your backups.

ZIP Disks – Though limited in capacity, ZIP disks are still a viable option.

Floppy Disks – If you have any, throw them out now

In the next few post I will share some case studies with you.

Marc