Backup

What does backup involve?

Losing all office data (e.g. accounts, customer database, technical drawings etc.) would be a major disaster for most businesses. All it takes is a faulty hard-drive, a fire or theft. As we rely on computing so much, data backup should form part of every company's IT strategy.

To identify the right solution, ask yourself what data you need to secure, how quickly you need to be able to restore it, and if you only ever need the latest version of your data or if you also need to preserve the history of different file versions. As you would expect, solutions for backup vary with the complexity of your requirements.

At its simplest - things you can implement yourself

A very simple solution is to attach an external hard-drive to your computer and periodically copy your files onto it. There is also software available that remembers to do this housekeeping task on your behalf. The advantage of this solution is its simplicity and low cost. The disadvantage is that you only ever keep the latest version of your files and the backed up data remains at your site. Should disaster strike there (e.g. fire, flood, theft) then your backed up data is ruined, too.

To store your data remotely, you could invest in two external hard-drives, keep one at your house and alternate the two drives between locations. Your exposure to data loss is only as big as the last time you "topped up" the hard-drive that's kept at your house with your data.

A more elegant solution for remote backup is to subscribe to a service such as BT's Digital Vault. A piece of software backs up your data over the Internet to a BT data centre. They take care of storing and securing your data. If you need to access it, you do it over the web, too.

More robust solutions

As your requirements increase you should invest in a more sophisticated backup facility. For example, there might be several people in the office with data held on several devices and servers. Or you have several premises, or indeed you require not just yesterday's version of files, but also going back several days or weeks. In these cases you should discuss your requirements with an IT professional. Help-Desks can assist you in finding the solution that's right for you.