Backup Considerations

Why you need to consider backup

Human Error.
The number 1 reason people lose data is due to someone deleting it or corrupting it (e.g. by oversaving new contents) The more people that can access the data, the greater the risk.
Disk/Storage Medium Failure
Hard Drives often spin at 7200rpm, thats 90 times a second, they wear out slowly, can get knocked, zapped by power failures or dropped. Writable CDs and DVDs can get scratched or slowly degrade over time (max 5 years life). Memory sticks get lost, snapped or wear out with lots of use. Backup tapes stretch or wear away.
Viruses and hackers.
Closely related (most hacking is done by introducing viruses or trojan horse programs). These can directly affect data, or result in data loss when users or admins react to the infection/intrusion.
Loss or Theft
You might just lose the device holding your data (e.g. laptops or memory sticks) or someone might steal it.
Power failures or water damage
These kill PCs sometimes, if a disk drive is on when they occur there is a very high chance of some or complete data loss.

Luckily there are lots of solutions to help save your precious documents, email, photos, homework and work data.

CDs, DVDs: make a copy of data on to a recordable media is cheap and relatively easy. Unfortunately you end up with lots of media and can't always be sure you have everything saved.
Removable USB attatched disk drives: relatively inexpensive and now offering good capacities for multiple backup copies, these are very good solutions for home users.
Removable hard disks and backup software: Imaging software with removable disks can backup a whole system, so both data and full configurations can be saved.
Network attatched storage: Gaining popularity, this can auto-backup a whole network of computers on to one device, which can then itself back up to removable disks
Tapes: tape drives offer large backup capacities on to relatively cheap media, They tend to require expensive tape drives and overnight backups, so are usually a business solution.
Cartridge hard disks: e.g. RDX disks, these work like removable disks, but look like backup tapes, they offer a great way of transporting data as they are more robust than normal removable drives. A great solution for a business.
Online backup: Send your data over the internet to a server that hopefully will keep it safe. Depending on the service (and usually paid services are safer) you can save stuff pretty effectively if you can cope with the possible slow nature of both the backup and recovery. Online data storage is getting cheaper for larger and larger volumes, but be careful to choose the right service if the data is confidential.

We sell a number of backup solutions and can help with most scenarios, just contact us.