Information in essential in every business and company. From your local car supplier to a multi national oil corporation, information is the key in how the modern commerce works and thus is a valuable asset which need to be protected.
Posts Tagged ‘Backup Data’
Online Server Backup – Remote Online Data Backup Services
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Home Data Backup in Windows XP
Saturday, June 13th, 2009Andrew Whitehead is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the best online backup software — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/home-data-backup-in-windows-xp.html
Possible Problems with Windows XP Data Backup Facility
The data backup facility in Windows XP is developed by Veritas, and works reasonably well on a small scale. It is very basic and has next to nothing in terms of whistles and bells, which is the root of its potential drawbacks. It has no media spanning; the ability to copy the data backup file to more than one disk, or whatever your preferred media is. If you are copying only your data file this is probably not going to be a problem, if you want to copy the whole drive it may be.
A second problem is that XP data backups are not compatible with Windows 98. If this is a problem, because you have some old data backups for instance, there is a way around it – you buy the commercial version from Veritas.
Another problem that some may find is doing a complete backup on a PC with no floppy drive. As a complete backup includes creating a recovery disk, it will return an error if there is no drive to create it on.
Deciding What to Put into Your Data Backup
Deciding what files to put into your data backup will decide whether you can use the XP data backup. If you have the installation disks from all of your applications you can get away with backing up only your data files, almost all of which are stored by default in My Documents making life very simple. You might also want to backup the registry, and you should beware of applications that store their files in dedicated, non-My Documents folders. The ones to watch are anything that works on text or graphics files.
Using Windows XP Data Backup
You will find it by going through Start/Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance, and you will see ‘Backup your data’.
If this is your first time, a wizard will appear, giving you two options. The simplest to decide is wether you want to ‘Always Start in Wizard Mode’. The easy answer is yes, but if you feel confident uncheck it. The other option is ‘Advanced Mode’ that not surprisingly offers more options.
Following the Wizard by clicking next gives two options, backup or restore. Since we are doing a data backup the choice is obvious. You now get four options of what to back up, select ‘My Documents’ unless you have reason not to, and click next. The next screen asks where you want the backup to go; the default is the desktop. Go with this. If you select ‘Finish’ now you will get a default backup.
You will see an Advanced button here, clicking this allows you to choose which folders to copy, whether it is a normal, copy, differential, incremental, or daily backup with explanations of the differences, and the options for verifying – always select this! – and volume shadow copy that allows files in use to be copied. Next you get the option to append or replace existing files, and finally run now or later.
Separation is Critical to Your Backup Strategy
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009Daniel Jones is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/separation-is-critical-to-your-backup-strategy.html
Thinking about Backup during a Recovery
For some reason, most people don’t seriously consider forming a backup strategy until they have experienced a significant data loss. A this point they are willing to consider all sorts of methods to protect them from data loss, but are quite put out that the new backup strategy will not help them recover what has been lost.
Failed Backup, a Double Disaster
The only thing worse then having to restore to your backup after a data loss is finding out that your backup has failed as well. This is why most experts advise your backup strategy include multiple backups and backup methods with a degree of separation between them. Without well separated and multiple backups you will often find the same issue that took down your live data will effect your backup as well.
Three Types of Backup Separation
In order to limit the number of single points of failure that can take down all your backups, it is important to separate your backup strategies in three ways. First and most obvious is the location of your backup media storage. Having a the library of backup data tapes in your server room may be convenient, but it does you little good when the fire that destroys the original also destroys your library. As many people find to their dismay, fireproof safes are often not. At a very minimum you should store copies of your backup tapes offsite and update the offsite backups regularly.
The second type of separation is method. In our previous example, storing copies of your tape backup offsite is a good first step, but if your tape backup software or hardware fails you would still be left with multiple copies of a failed backup. A more secure alternative would be to mix they backup methods, for example a local copy of your tape backups, with an offsite online backup.
With this strategy, even if the online, or tape backup were to fail due to problems with the internet connection, or other software/hardware issues, their is an excellent chance that the other backup will still be available.
The third and final type of separation we will discuss is that of time. A common problem with failed backups is that when the backup is taking place, one of the files that needs to be backed up is locked, or in use. The ideal cure for this is to monitor your logs and reports and schedule the backup to occur at a time when the task locking the file is not running. In the real world however, this is not always possible.
Since we discussed the importance for multiple backups in the previous paragraph, just make sure that their is a significant difference in time between the two backups. This gives us a better chance that one of the two backups will pick up the problem file. Despite this you still need to pay close and daily attention to your logs and reports.
Online Data Storage Backup – Benefits of Backing Data Storage Online
Saturday, June 6th, 2009A lot of people and companies are using online data storage backup these days to make sure that their data and files aren’t lost in the event of a disaster. There are plenty of compelling reasons why this option should be taken into consideration, especially if you have a corporation or a small company, or if you need to keep some personal files safe.
Why Do I Need to Backup My Data?
Saturday, May 30th, 2009Walter Stevens is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular tool for online backup and recovery — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/why-do-i-need-to-backup-my-data.html
What is Data Backup?
Data backup involves the storing of files from your computer in another location. In this way, if there is ever any loss of data on your primary machine, you still have your data in backup in order to restore those files. In the world of computers loss of data can be devastating, and while there are possibilities for recovery of data after a disaster it is far easier to restore your files from backup than to attempt to find your data on a crashed hard drive.
Why do I Want to Backup My Data?
Data backup is easy to do and can save you great amounts of time as well as ensure that your data is secure in the case of disaster. Data recovery is a very difficult, time consuming and expensive process, and it is not even assured that you will be able to recover your data from a system crash.
Backup does not take much time, as it is easy to put your files onto another medium, and is not too expensive, depending upon what mediums you use to backup your data. There are many different options for data backup, and you will have to choose the one that is best for you.
What is the Best Data Backup Option for Me?
The traditional floppy disks of a few years ago have become essentially obsolete, and it is not surprising considering the limitations of that medium, and the new technologies that have become available in the meantime, such as CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, online backup and key drives. These are all very powerful tools which can hold far more data than a 3.5 inch floppy could ever dream of holding.
One of the most powerful new data backup utilities is the key drive. These key-chain sized drives can hold up to a gigabyte more of data, depending upon the size purchased, and will not scratch or damage as easily as a floppy disk or even a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. You can purchase a key drive for as little as $20, and it will plug directly into you computer and be able to be immediately be used.
CD-R, DVD-R versus CD-RW, DVD-RW
CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs are also very powerful tools for data backup. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are very inexpensive, costing less than a dollar a disk oftentimes. However, these devices do have the limitation of only being usable once. Once your CD-R or DVD-R is finalized, it is finished. You can access data from the disk, but you cannot write any more data onto the disk.
This is not the case with CD-RW and DVD-RW. CD-RW stands for CompactDisk-ReWritable, and unlike a normal CD-R they can be rewritten any number of times. However it should be pointed out that they are not as manipulable as a traditional floppy disk, where you can save and take off files very easily. Each time you want to rewrite your disk, you must rewrite the entire disk and go through the entire burning process.
However, this is still an excellent way to backup your data as a CD-RW or DVD-RW can hold hundreds of thousands of megabytes, respectively. You need to backup your data, and there are many ways that you can do so.
