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What type(s) of backups are best for a small business?
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Small businesses may not always have the money to invest in high-level backup services to protect their mission critical data, and they usually do not need to. This doesn't mean that small business data isn’t just as important, but just that a simpler solution is all that is needed for a small set of computers.
Small businesses can range from 1-500 employees, and choosing a backup software and backup method will depend on the amount of data that needs to be protected and specific backup needs of the business.
For most businesses, the home computing ‘burn it to a CD’ option won't work due to speed and storage limitations. This is why most businesses choose tape, or perferably a secondary storage as their backup media. Tape backups are commonly used because they can backup large amounts of data relatively inexpensively. Tape backups also gives you better protection by allowing you to store archival tapes offsite in the case of theft, fire or some other disaster.
Secondary storage backups (such as a NAS drive or RAID array) are preferable because it makes restore time a lot faster and reliable in comparison to tape. Offsite backups, and backups to FTP are also great choices.
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What type(s) of backup are best for a network?
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The nice thing about having a network, particularly one utilizing servers, is that all LAN computers can be backed up to the server as a grouped backup job, eliminating the need to backup each computer individually.
Backing up multiple computers with 1 profile is preferable, and try to stay away from a backup software that cannot accomplish this task.
Some backup software will allow you to specify a set of UNC path(s) to backup, and others will allow you to simply select your choices via a file tree.
A UNC path is in the form of: \\computername\c$. This path can be typed into explorer and you can access the resources on a remote machine on your LAN or VPN.
c$ is just the name of the share, if you are using Windows XP Home or Vista Home, you will have to manually create a share. If you are using Windows XP Pro, 2000, 2003 or Vista, you will have an administrative share labeled X$ for each of your local drives X.
Data retention rules or archival rules are also important when performing network backups as they allow the IT administrator to maximize storage capacity and to stay compliant with new data retention laws.
As always, what is best for someone else’s backup strategy may not be right for yours, so make sure to fully investigate all options before making a decision as there are many backup medias including tape, disk arrays and remote storage services to name some of the many available. At a minimum, at least backup all LAN computers to another computer on the LAN.
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What are the best types of backup media for a home computer?
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CDs (both CD-R and CD-RW), DVDs, and external hard drives
are probably the best backup media to use.
CDs and DVDs offer small size, low price, and ease of use, making storing them
offsite extremely easy. One important word of advise is that CDs and DVDs won’t
last forever as they do expire with time. The best way to protect
yourself from CD/DVD corruption is to not always use the same CD/DVD at backup
time. Keep multiple backup copies so that for example: if your 1 week old backup does not restore, at least you have your 2 week old backup.
External drives may seem intimidating to the inexperienced user, but they’re
really easy to use and offer more storage space than either CDs or DVDs. The
downside of external drives is that you don’t store them offsite.
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