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Time to Abandon the “Point-in-Time” Backups
By Stuart Crawford

In today’s world, data and electronic communications are critical to small business success. If your data was to disappear, what would that do to your business? What would a series of data losses cost your business? What great ideas would be gone, never to come back?

The most common solution for many small businesses is to use tape devices, hard drives and some companies even used CD/DVD disks to back up their sales databases, accounting information, client information and any other data that is important to their business.

The issue with tape and disk-based backup systems is that they are a point-in-time backup. What does this mean? Sometime in the middle of the night, a process is started on your computer or network servers to take all of your data, emails, and system configuration and put a copy onto a tape or disk. This is great to have a copy of your data store on some removable device.

At the very least, you will at least have a backup that is 24 hours old. Is this suitable for your business? Maybe not! What happens if your server crashes and you have a data loss at 5 PM in the evening? OK, now your IT consultant has a tape from last nightgreat start. What about all the work that happened throughout the day? How about all the intellectual property that was created that day, that big sales proposal that can take your business to the next level or that important annual report that your executive assistant worked on all day?

Now you have the loss of all that intellectual property and a cost factor associated with it. Let’s just look at the numbers relating to one day of data loss in a company. Your company is 25 employees and all of them work on your computer network throughout the day. To be reasonable we will say they work 6 hours on files, correspondence and other important business data. We will assume that the average rate of pay is $20.00 per hour to be on the conservative side.

In this example, your single day loss of productivity just from a salary perspective is $3,000.00 in lost wages. This number does not account for the lost Intellectual Property, revenues relating to the not getting the proposals out in time and any other expenses relating to not meeting your targets. Also this number does not account for what your IT Company will charge you to recover your data from last night’s tape.

There are great solutions to protect small business today from the loss of data, time, salaries and other expenses associated with data loss. The SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection appliance is a great solution for today’s small business. The CDP backup unit will take all of your corporate data and store it on a device that sits on your network and in real time backs up all of your data as changes are made. So now in the example where your server fails and you suffer a data loss, all of your sales information, accounting data, correspondence and other company data is safely stored on the backup appliance.

This is all great however, many IT people will question the ability to take the data off-site. At least with a tape we can store that data off-site at a secure vault or other storage facility. Fair enough, however the SonicWALL CDP appliance will also back up your data off-site (after the data is backed up on the appliance) at one of their electronic storage facilities. Now you take away the human factor of someone having to handle your tape and risk losing your corporate data because of a lost or stolen tape.

For today’s small business, a robust SonicWALL CDP appliance that will back up your corporate data, allow for versions of your data so you can go back and recover a particular version, and also give your employees that ability to recover their own data. No more tapes, human interaction and other potential issues relating to time. No more point in time backups and now into real time backup with versioning. The potential return on this investment is immediate. A good point in time tape device with software and tapes will cost the same as the backup appliance from SonicWALL.

As a small business owner, you need to be concerned about the loss of your critical corporate data however you shouldn’t be worried about the loss because you can know that you are properly safeguarded from any data loss. Remember, the cost of data loss is a lot more that just the cost of the data you have salaries, potential loss of revenue and many more expenses.

Invest in the technology to safeguard your business.

Stuart Crawford is a business leader in the Calgary, Alberta small business computer consulting business. He is the Director of Business Development for Calgary’s award winning small business IT service organization IT Matters. IT Matters is a SonicWALL Gold Partner and leader in SonicWALL solutions in the Calgary marketplace. He can be reached at scrawford@itmatters.ca.

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Data Backup Software
By Eddie Tobey

We live in a world where our electronic data is constantly at risk of being deleted or corrupted. The major reason for the loss of your data could be one of the following: human error (you delete a file by mistake), hardware failure (your hard disk crashes), software corruption, or a virus (that wipes out your data). This is discounting natural or man made calamities like floods, fires, hurricanes, terrorist acts of sabotage or theft.

One regularly reads about some or the other new virus that destroys the data of an entire group of computers. Companies and people who do not pay enough attention to backing up (copying) their data have suffered irreparable losses when their data gets wiped out by any of the factors mentioned above.

It is not only advisable, but also extremely necessary to safeguard the precious data, by backing it up. There are many ways to take backups of the data. Some of the popular devices used are USB flash drives (not feasible for large quantity of data), external hard disks (could be prone to hardware crash), CDs or DVD drives (DVD backups are becoming increasingly popular), online backup and tape drives (despite being obsolete are still in use).

The backing up process requires software. Data backup hardware devices can communicate with the computers through the software programs, which are provided with them. These programs first need to be installed on the computer before you can start the process of backing up the data. Flash drives these days come with internal software and plugging it into most new systems ensures instant recognition and reading and writing to these devices. To make backups on external hard disks, the operating system is adequate. To make a back up on your CD or DVD, you first need a CD or a DVD writer along with the software that allows you to write to it. After these are installed, the data can easily be written (and written quite fast) and the CD or DVD can be stored. To back up the data online, you just need an Internet connection and the ability to upload the file on the Internet. Backing up data on tape drives require a set up which also comes with its the software that assists one to do so.

Backup Software provides detailed information on Backup Software, CD ROM Backup Software, Free Backup Software, Computer Backup Software and more. Backup Software is affiliated with Network Status Monitoring Software.

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The Advantages of Help Desk Support Software
By Kent Pinkerton

Help desk support software is a must-have for any new or existing online business. Even if the majority of your business is off-line, many people prefer online product and service support. Customers want their questions answered quickly and personnel need a way to effectively manage their work. Help desk software is an affordable, easy-to-use and useful tool for the growth of your business.

Some of the benefits of help desk support software may include an increase in customer satisfaction, few calls to call centers, more productivity of personnel, and the ability to determine and better manage issues with your service or products. Consistent feedback can help the growth of your company by keeping you informed on what works and was does not.

Both customers and personnel will benefit from a productive help desk program. Most help desk support software programs allow the end-user to compile a list of FAQ’s to better serve the client base. In cases such as this, many companies choose to automate their help desks. This can save the company both time and money by letting customers find the answers to their own questions. Of course there will be occasions when the FAQ’s do not cover every conceivable troubleshooting issue. Although help desks can be automated, this type of software also allows for more advanced technical support to be offered. Customers can simply submit an inquiry to the appropriate department and expect a timely response. With help desk support software packages, customer and technical support staff are better able to manage and track trouble tickets.

Purchasing a help desk software package can increase your customers’ satisfaction and their desire to continue business with you. Without such a management program, staff can be easily overwhelmed with support calls and emails. Customer support should be the top priority on any business’ agenda. Without a loyal customer base, a company simply will not thrive.

Help Desk Software Info provides detailed information on help desk software solutions, including IT help desk software, web-based help desk software, free help desk software, help desk tracking, help desk support software, and reviews of help desk software programs. Help Desk Software Info is the sister site of Recruiting Software Web.

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Offsite Backup - Be Very Careful Who You Deal With!
By Lee Morrell

The concept of offsite data backup is not new some time ago it was only available to corporate institutions that had multiple locations, high connectivity speeds and very high budgets. Today the cost of hardware and high speed connectivity has greatly reduced, as a result the number of companies offering backup to a remote location has greatly increased. For purposes of conversation, we can call it jumping on the band wagon.

You may think the increased competition is good for the consumer, to an extent, I agree, but not at the cost of cutting corners and jeopardising the security of your data. We all know and agree a company’s data is its most important asset, and to lose or give access to your competition such an asset is never an option. So please be careful where you store your data.

The general idea of offsite backup is a good one, after all it has a very low proportionate implementation cost and as the correct system should be completely automated the cost of ownership is also very low as well. Unlike tape backup it is also very scalable, you can start small and grow into larger solutions as and when you require with zero disruption but you have to be with the right offsite backup company in the first place.

In today’s data centric environment even smaller companies may have more than one server, just for example a server for Microsoft Exchange/Lotus Notes, a server for Microsoft SQL/Oracle/MySQL and potentially a file and print server, or maybe a single server which carries out all tasks. Smaller companies may still use older inherited Unix based or Novell based systems or may be considering migrating to a lower cost Linux environment. Whet ever you currently use or what you may use in the future your offsite backup solution will need to adapt. Please check, what ever backup company you use, make sure they are always developing their products for the future, your companies future.

Getting data to an offsite location is the easy bit, anybody can click and drag to an ftp site, to optimise your backup and more importantly your recovery times make sure your data is compressed locally or at source. The most important element of any data transfer is security, make sure your data is encrypted before it is transmitted and remains encrypted whilst in storage if this is the case only your organisation will have access to your data.

In what environment is your data stored? There is no point just moving your most important asset to another location, make sure it is totally safe, data should only be backed up to a class 1 data centre with the highest security and safety measures in place, hardware should be clustered so there is no single point of failure within that data centre and for added security and peace of mind the whole data centre and hardware within should be a replicated in real time to a second location in preferably another country.

Imagine your local data backed up every night or when ever you wish to a secure remote location in the UK and then replicated in real-time to a second data centre in a different country.
Finally this whole process must be as efficient as possible. It must be totally secure, fully automated ensuring your staff are focussed on revenue generating functions, it must support open files enabling you to backup regardless of what your systems are doing and it must be capable of incremental backups, after all there is no point re-transmitting a file which has not been accessed for a year.

So after reading this article I now hope it has made you think and understand why the cheapest offsite backup solution is rarely the best.

For more information of how offsite backup can help your organisation please visit www.perfectbackup.co.uk

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Web-based hold desk code has embellish the most favourite artefact to control theoretical inquiries and issues. The knowledge to admittance your hold desk from whatever PC in the concern is a rattling favourable tool. These programs substance plasticity and availableness that was unobtainable in past creation versions.

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Help Desk Software Info provides careful aggregation on hold desk code solutions, including IT hold desk software, web-based hold desk software, liberated hold desk software, hold desk tracking, hold desk hold software, and reviews of hold desk code programs. Help Desk Software Info is the miss place of Recruiting Software Web.

[tags]help desk software, free help desk software, IT help desk software[/tags]

External Data Backup
By Kent Pinkerton

Backup depends both on the software and the hardware used. Backups are frequently made from hard disk based production systems. Before deciding on a backup system, the way in which the system is used and the connections required must be thought of. This will help to identify the most suitable match. There are several types of external data backup devices. Auxiliary hard drives are available in both internal and external versions. Prices have come down over the years as storage capacity has considerably increased.

There are different removable media drives. They include a variety of products that use some type of removable disk or cartridge. Zip drives, offered in desktop and compact versions for use with portables, are the more universal. Zip drives are starting to appear in scanners and printers. Super Disk can read both high capacity disks and floppies you have been using for years.

CD-RW is a drive that writes to a high capacity CD-R (recordable disc) or CD-RW (rewritable disc). It has a lot of storage capacity. DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) is the newest optical recording technology, and it is popular because of the large amount of data that can be stored on each disc. The main problem is its price. Tape backup systems for offices and networks offer a combination of attractive prices, high capacity per tape cartridge, and automated data backup functions. They provide real time hard disk backup and disk imaging. Magnetic tapes and floppy drives are also used for data backup. Floppy drives are a traditional method.

Drive backup creates a backup image of the whole hard disk with operating system, with all user preferences and settings, applications and data files. With the latest drive backup you can create the complete hard drive image without interrupting current activity. It serves to restore data at any time, set up a new hard drive or clone hard drive, schedule the backup process, make differential backups, and use disk image verification and password protection.

Flash drives are used for backup of a small amount of data. Flash drives are also known as thumb drives or memory sticks. Flash drives are small, offer infinite rewrite capabilities, and are easy to plug into any computer with USB port. Data durability is expected to be approximately ten years. They are not subject to damage by magnets.

Most traditional external data backup systems need a data set to be frozen for hours while the complete content of a file system is copied to magnetic tape. Modern techniques use incremental backup forever. Individual data objects are backed up in logical order on backup media such as magnetic tape so that they may be retrieved independently.

Data Backup provides detailed information on Data Backup, Online Data Backup, Data Backup Services, Data Backup Storage and more. Data Backup is affiliated with Computer Data Storage.

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The Importance of Data Backups
By Keith Erwood

All computers and their components are subject to failure. In fact sooner or later every business will be confronted with some type of computer failure. The largest threat to businesses during a failure will be some type of data loss or data corruption. While the causes of data loss and data corruption vary, not all are easily fixed.

When a data loss or data corruption occurs, many times the only option is to restore the data from a previously created backup of the affected data. Many businesses today over look the importance of data backups until they suffer the unexpected loss or corruption of valuable data. Once this occurs it would be too late, unless the business is lucky enough to restore the data by physically recreating all the affected files from scratch. This of course is only possible if they have a hard copy or another source from which to recreate the data. It will also cost the business a valuable amount of man hours in recreating the data as well. That is if they are lucky enough to be able to even recreate the data in the first place.

If your business has made backups of all data stored on the hard drives, restoring that data will go much more quickly and require a lot less effort. It will also require a lot less man hours and tears shed over the loss that has occurred.

Today there are many options available to businesses for storing and backing up their data. Some of the options available are tape drives and tape libraries, CD-R’s and CD-RW’s to DVD technologies. There is also the option to use NAS (Network Area Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Networks) and even remote backups over the internet. Even Windows XP/Server 2003 offers a restore point in case your system becomes corrupted. Of course just having these tools available to you is not enough. They need to be used properly and on a continuous basis to be effective.

Sooner or later all systems will face some type of failure that will require a restore from backup. The point is to perform those backups so they are there when you need them.

It is recommended that you sit down with your systems administrator to create a backup plan for your business immediately if you have not done so already. Also recommended, is that you review your backup plan yearly as well. When discussing your backup plan there are certain options to consider. Such as how often to perform the backups and what type of backup media is best suited for your business. Depending on your type of business and how much your data changes from day to day you may want to perform backups weekly, daily, or several times per day. For most small to mid-sized businesses I would recommend a full backup once per week with incremental backups at the end of each work day.

You will also want to consider whether or not to keep some of your backups off site in the case your business is affected by some type of natural or man made disaster. In addition you may also want software to monitor your backup process in order to ensure that your backups are not corrupted as well. This is a common experience with some types of backup media as well.

Finally you may also want to perform a system restore on an occasional basis so that you can check the effectiveness of the restoration process that you have set in place and to practice it so it goes as smoothly as possible.

Following these steps may be essential to your business continuity should your systems fail and you suffer a loss or corruption of data. Setting up a backup plan as well as a restoration plan will also go a long way in ensuring your business operations if you run into a system failure. This would help establish a “who is to do what” list if your systems should fail.

Failing to backup your business data, especially mission critical data is nothing short of a recipe for disaster. Nothing is as important to your business as the data that sits on the hard drives of your systems.

Copyright, Keith Erwood, Dynamic Network Technologies, © 2005 All Rights Reserved

Keith Erwood is the head consultant and owner of Dynamic Network Technologies, a computer consulting and services business in New York City. Visit us at Dynamic Network Technologies

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Learn How To Make Data Backup Over The Internet!
By Per Strandberg

Why should you backup your data on the Internet?

There are several reasons.

* The backup is located at a secure place for away from your computer.

* It s is easy to do.
* Free available disk space on your web site can be used for storage.
* Disk space on remote server can be used for storage.

* It’s a practical backup solution for small businesses and home users.

* It’s gives extra security for documents and files.

There are basically three different types of data backup you can make!

* Full Backup of the hard disk.
* Full disk image backup for fast recovery.
* Backup of specific files and folders.

Online backup of a complete hard disk is not practical to do. Although, it can be done. The size requirement and the transfer speed over the Internet makes it yet not powerful enough to do. However in the future complete backup of hard disks online will be more common. Backup over the Internet is best suited for storing limited numbers of specific files and folders.

To do this you need an FTP software which makes it possible to move files over the internet. FTP stand for “file transfer protocol” and is the most commonly used method of transferring files between computers over the Internet.

Use FTP transfer and backup to your web site or to a remote server as a safeguard of your vital data files!

Learn how at http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com/ftp-backup.html

Normally you don’t need to backup all the content of your hard disk, to recreate your data.

To be able to make a full recovery of your data, make sure that you keep CD’s of all your installation programs and operating system in a safe place. In addition, if you have installed software from the Internet you need to keep copies of the installation programs as backup together with the installation codes.

After you have done that, you need to identify the files and folders that are important to backup.

These are the files you use on a daily basis either in private or in your business. If you are using Windows this can be files in My Document folder and/or your Outlook email files.

These are the files you need to backup so that you can recreate your computer back to what it was if you have lost your data.

If you transfer files from your hard disk directly to the remote site you risk exposing your data to hackers. Your data are not secure from outside preying eyes.

To get full protection you should use a backup software to first create a backup file which is stored temporarily on you hard drive. This file is then transferred with an FTP program to the online server.

There are also a number of online backup services you can subscribe to for this purpose. They often use their own transfer protocol.

Online backups should be made at regular intervals. It is also a practical way to make backup if you use a laptop and are on the move, given you have access to an Internet connection, of course.

If you get a hard disk crash or if your computer gets lost, then you need to be able to recover your data back to what it was

The first step you have to take is to install the operation system and the software from the installation CD’s which you have stored in a safe place.
Next step is to download the backup or backups you are keeping on the Internet.

If you store your backup on a web site or on a server you should make sure that the backup is encrypted so that nobody else is able to read it.

You must keep the server’s username and password you are using as well as the password you use for encryption of the backup written down on paper in a safe place so that you can recreate your data.

Full backup can be made using other types of media such as tapes, DVD’s, on different disks or on networks.

To do this you need to have access to such devices.

This will cost you money.

The memory requirement for today’s computers has increased. The cost of regular backup on tapes or on DVD’s is high.

If you are an entrepreneur or a home computer user, this may not be an option available for you.

What happens if your computer gets stolen?

What happen if the building you keep your computer are struck by fire and destroyed?

Laptop and mobile computer are especially prone to theft. Not only because it is easy to carry away, but also because it is easy to get money by selling.

Therefore, you need to make backup of your important data on a location that is different from where you have your computer. Internet backup of data files is an attractive and cheap solution.

Per Strandberg has interest in backup technology and he is running an information site on backup and data security at http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com

Learn how to make secure online data backup using ftp at http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com/ftp-backup.html

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So People, Has Online Backup Come Of Age?
By Mike Rawson

Backing up your dearest data to a secure, encrypted server in a remote location gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. The very fact that your backup is automatically offsite makes this a very cool concept. Online backups also have an added bonus of allow you to share files easily - as well as being able to access your files when you travel. Be aware however that some services won’t offer this as they don’t think it’s secure enough.

Not having to buy any hardware is another big plus. But the lingering question is what happens to my data if this crowd a zillion miles away isn’t here tomorrow morning! Of course it will coincide with my PC crashing - that’s how it always works..

So with this slightly chilling thought in mind you will find below a review of the five best online backup providers.

If you are one of those people who just want to know the winner - then TADA!

Xdrive

After we examined lots of Online Backup services, we chose six that are on their game: Acpana Data Deposit Box, Connected Data Protector, FirstBackup, Pro-Softnet’s Ibackup, Xdrive also @Backup, Amerivault, DataVault, Intronis Technologies EsureIT, Iomega Istorage Online, Novastor Online Backup Service, Register.com, and SwapDrive.

Choosing a Backup Service

It appears that a lot of the offerings differ mainly on price and capacity - the ones below all offer file encryption and compression, good privacy and thin desktop client. Their differences lie mainly in price, capacity, usability, and online management of your files. It appears longer-term plans are discounted all but Acpana have an annual plan, and FirstBackup also offers quarterly pricing.

Each of these online backup providers will do a good job with your valuable data but for casual use you can’t beat Data Deposit Box’s pay-for-what-you-use pricing. Ibackup is inexpensive, but its interface is clunky. Xdrive’s easy to use with a big 5GB plan comes out our preferred service.

Connected Data Protector and FirstBackup are good services for anyone who doesn’t want or need Web-based access. Connected Data Protector is less expensive on a monthly basis. FirstBackup being cheaper annually.

Data Deposit Box

At 1 cent per megabyte per month, for the first gigabyte you’d pay only $1 a month or $12 a year for 100MB. The added cost for anything above that first gigabyte is only 0.3 cents per MB, which keeps Data Deposit Box competitive up to the point where you should be asking about volume discounts anyway. You can manage and share your Data Deposit Box files online, but you can also disable Web access via the client software if you’re worried about security

Data Deposit Box service with pay-for-as-much-as-you-use pricing is a winner small amounts of data. Data Deposit Box’s set-it-and-forget-it desktop client automates the backup process and handles everything in the background. No scheduling, though instead, the client backs up files as they’re changed. During our testing, the client seemed to use hardly any Windows resources and didn’t interfere with other tasks. It uploaded our small backup and didn’t impact our surfing.

Connected Data Protector

Although this software was by far the fastest of the five in our tests when uploading files, it was so heavy on our 128K upstream bandwidth that surfing the Web was rubbish. You’ll want to schedule backups for after midnight. The backup client is nearly as slick-looking as Xdrive’s but is clunky. The ugly scanning of files that occurs every time you switch views would drive you mad.

Did we mention its also a bandwidth hog.

$14.95 a month or $164.95 yearly for 2GB of storage is OK for small businesses that want outstanding secure storage without the drama of sharing or online file management.

FirstBackup

In our tests, this required more CPU than the Data Deposit Box client, and the upload-progress dialog box didn’t work that well. We found we could still browse the Web while the backup was in progress, but slowly. For security, FirstBackup omits online management and sharing, so it’s not for people who put security first.

Installed as either a Windows service or a stand-alone program. We found this service quite easy to use.

FirstBackup charges $13.89 a month or $124.95 a year for the first 1GB of storage. Ibackup or Xdrive are cheaper but at $2.75 for each additional gigabyte, it’s competitive with Data Deposit Box and Connected Data Protector for big data amounts.

Ibackup

Ibackup comes in two flavours. The professional version is more secure, but for that reason it omits the easy online file management and sharing that the plain-vanilla version offers. Both backup clients use a classic tabbed interface but they need work to make them more user friendly.

This service overall works quite well. The normal client also offers backup to CD/DVD in case your Internet connection is out or hideously slow.

$9.95 monthly or $99.50 per year for 5GB is as super value in the online backup market, Ibackup simply isn’t as easy to use as Xdrive.

Xdrive

At $9.95 monthly or $99.95 yearly for 5GB of online storage, Xdrive is comparable to Ibackup for best cost per gigabyte in this review. However uploads via the client were painfully slow. But, while the backups were in progress we could still surf at good pace, a worthwhile trade-off if you want to be able to do stuff while Xdrive is running.

Xdrive has a superior interface and it’s apparent a lot of time has been spent in this area. Managing and sharing files online is the best we have found, thanks to Xdrive’s file selector. The downloadable client is even more sexy, and Xdrive uniquely creates a Windows Network drive to which you can drag and drop files.

We found their support exemplary and best of all they offer a no obligation 30 day free trial - so what are you waiting for - online backups have come of age!

http://www.backupmycontacts.com/online-backups.html

Mike Rawson

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An Introduction to Tape Backup
By Linus Chang

If you run a small business, chances are you re saving important files to a server. But what happens when disaster strikes? How are you ensuring that your files won t be lost? Many people fail to realize that the loss of files could cripple their business. You can insure your office and equipment, but you can t insure files. You can t repair or buy back lost files. Ipso facto, they are lost!

This brings us to the concept of disaster recovery. What is disaster recovery? If you re thinking that disaster recovery is about frantically trying to get back data that s already been lost, then you re already behind the 8-ball! Disaster recovery is about safeguarding your organization s data so that it can be safely restored in event of a crippling disaster. And having an industry-standard file backup strategy is undoubtedly the most important part of disaster recovery.

What you have to do is ensure that all files on the server are backed up to another storage medium — tape, removable hard disk, NAS device, and so on. Most businesses choose to use tape. Let s look at how you can set up a tape backup strategy for your own business.

1. Tape — the perfect backup medium

Isn t tape an anachronism in the age of optical disks, removable hard drives and a plethora of whiz-bang, random-access storage media? Tape is indeed a dinosaur in relative terms, but it s ideal for backup. Tape is slow, but can store a lot of data… one mid-range tape should be enough to backup your entire server. Plus, tape is extremely cheap — mid-range tapes cost around $20 each.

2. When should you backup?

Typically, tape backup is performed at the end of each day. Just put in the tape and let the backup process run overnight. If your server ever suffers a catastrophic disaster, you have at least saved all your files from the previous day.

3. Tape Rotation

The ideal tape backup solution would involve using a new tape for each backup. This means purchasing a new tape for every day of your business s operations. This is hardly cost-effective for your business. Tape is cheap, but not that cheap!

This is why we speak of tape rotation. Tape rotation means to reuse tapes from previous backups. The simplest tape rotation scheme is to have one tape for each day of the working week. Tapes are labelled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

You can restore data from any one of the tapes in your library, or in this case, any day in the past the week. This strategy requires only five tapes, but only provides one week s data backup history.

4. Grandfather-Father-Son — A Case Study

The grandfather-father-son schedule is the most widely used method, and involves backing up data in the following way:

* daily — on the “son tapes”
* weekly — on the “father tapes”
* monthly — on the “grandfather tapes”

This system is far more powerful than the five-tape rotation, but requires more tapes.

This strategy provides you with the ability to restore data from the last week, plus any Monday over the last month, plus any month for as many monthly tapes as you have. Variations on this scheme are available, and provide a trade-off between the number of tapes required, and the number of monthly tapes available.

5. Different types of backup

Different types of backups are available in backup software.

* Full — all files, system data
* Differential — all files added or changed since the last full backup

* Incremental — all files added or changed since the last full, differential or incremental backup

* Daily — all files added or changed on the day of the backup

A Full backup will copy all files and system data to the backup media. It allows for the complete restore of all data from one single tape.

Differential, Incremental and Daily are partial backups are designed to reduce amount of data backed-up to the media, resulting in faster backups. To restore data using one of these backups, the last Full backup tape will also be required, along with any other partial backups since the last Full backup.

6. Tape backup software

At this point you may be thinking that performing tape backup is a complex task. Tape rotations, incremental backups… sure, you can try to do this manually, but this would make the backup process hiddeously difficult and prone to human error! The solution is to invest in a good piece of server backup software that will manage and schedule your tape backups for you.

What should you look for in tape backup software? For many small business owners, the price is crucial. Many brands of backup software are just too expensive — in the $1000+ range — and contain features that you ll never need. Look for a backup utility that s designed specially for small business instead. It should be simple-to-use, reliable and affordable. Choose a good tape backup software and you ll be well on your way to safeguarding your files and data.

Linus Chang is a backup expert and the lead developer of BackupAssist– backup software that is simple and affordable, and perfect for small and medium businesses. Protect your Windows servers, including SQL Server and Exchange Server, to tape, REV drive, hard drive, NAS and more, at a fraction of the cost of other backup programs. Designed as a fix for NTBackup bugs and issues.

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