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How do I keep my backups safe?
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One way to keep backups safe is to manually take them offsite and store them in a safe environment, such as a fireproof container or safety deposit box. Even if you don’t choose to keep your backups in a secured container, taking them offsite at least assures that your backups won't be lost to an on site disaster. (Note: if you’re backing up to CD or DVD, keeping them stored in a cool, dark, dry area will prolong their life.)
Another way to keep backups safe is to use media that can’t be accidentally overwritten. While tape libraries and disk arrays assume that the backup media will be overwritten, accidental overwrites can be avoided. Even something as simple as opening the write/access hole on a floppy or using CD-Rs, rather than CD-RWs, can help you protect your data from accidents.
A third way to help protect your backups is to have a backup of the backup. This doesn't mean that you should necessarily copy all existing backups but instead means, that you should consider running second monthly or weekly backups in parallel to your existing ones.
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Should I take my backups offsite?
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Absolutely. While there are no guarantees that the disaster you will have to recover from won’t be area-wide, rather than local to your home or office, your disaster recovery plan should definitely cover situations like a fire or water damage. Leaving your backup in the same location as your computers/servers ignores the basic backup strategy of not keeping your backup at the same location that it was made from.
Of course, there is an easier way to move backups offsite which includes using an offsite backup provider or setting up a remote backup server at a different location than your home of office.
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How long does backup media (like tapes or CDs) last?
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While there have been claims that CD-R/RWs are supposed to last as long as 25 years under ideal conditions (but how many of us store anything under ‘ideal conditions’?) recent reports are that they can be expected to last only 2-5 years. (And DVD-Rs don’t do much better.)
Various studies have shown that writing over a CD-RW will shorten its lifetime and that cheaper disks don’t last as long as more expensive ones.
Tapes, on the other hand, should last 30-100 years. However, that also assumes, as with CD-RWs, that they haven’t been repeatedly written over.
The most important thing to remember is that no media, no matter its cost, will last forever.
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What exactly should I back up?
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Backups are really about protecting whatever you feel you would need to replace should you experience a computer crash or worse.
If you have installation disks, you won’t necessarily need to back up already installed programs but you should backup the program's data. Another important item to backup are your emails and pictures as they are quite important to most users.
Some ask, can't I simply backup everything? The answer is yes! Storage media is relatively inexpensive, so making a full computer backup is not out of the question. It's ideal to backup only the data you need though, since more data backed up means more data to manage.
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Is one type of backup sufficient?
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In the sense of ‘do I need to be using different types of media for the same backup’, one type is sufficient as long as the backup isn’t kept with the computer that it is protecting.
In the sense of backing up different types of files on different schedules, then it’s perfectly OK to consider different types of backup media.
For example, monthly backups could be done for email while daily backups could be done of business database changes. It depends on how critical the data is and how often it’s updated.
Try to put yourself in the perspective of your data being lost. Suddenly this thought will pop into mind "I hope my backup worked". More is always better, but one is better than none.
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How long should I keep a backup?
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In part this will depend on external issues. The IRS says you should keep tax returns for 3 years, so in reality you should keep a backup of tax returns for a minimum of 3 years. If your business must follow federal regulations that say you have keep client records for 7 years, then keep backed up client records for at least 7 years. Obviously this assumes you have been backing files up based on specific criteria, rather than just anything and everything.
As far as ‘generic’ backups, you probably should keep more than just the last backup around because you never know when a particular backup will fail, as verification is not always fool proof.
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Which should I choose - replace or append backups?
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Replacing backups means just that you replace a previous backup with a new backup. Appending a backup means that you add a new version of a files to an existing backup.
For home and most small business situations, you don’t need to keep more than a few week’s worth of backups (with an occasional ‘master’ backup to save longer term). As a result, you can probably replace backups after a couple of weeks.
While you might feel safer adding to your store of backups, you could easily run out of space by creating an ever-growing backup file.
The best strategy is to create a appended backups with archived snapshots at different periods. Make sure that your backup software allows you to keep only a certain number of appended versions before cleaning up old versions. |
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What type of encryption should I look for in backup software?
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If you’re simply backing up your home computer and those backups consist of your favorites, photos, and that half-finished novel, encryption might not be all that important.
On the other hand, if you have bank passwords, tax returns, and other things you wouldn't want falling into anyone else’s hands, then 128 bit (or higher) encryption should be used for your backup plan. AES, Blowfish, Triple DES, Twofish, and many others are great choices.
The two most important things to remember when using encryption is one, don’t forget the password you chose and two, make it hard enough that it's not easy enough to guess! |
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