Why Backup?
If it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. You'll turn on your computer, the hard drive will fail to turn on and you'll receive an error message about the lack of a boot device. Where is your data?
Industry statistics say that 60% of all small businesses who lose their data never open their doors again. Do you have your data backed up? Where would you be if it all disappeared in a puff of smoke? Do you have fire insurance for your business? If you do, but you don't have your data backed up, you are many times more likely to suffer from data loss as from a fire. Why pay for fire insurance and risk the whole enterprise on a cheap piece of hardware like a hard drive?
At the very least, you should copy important data from one computer, across the network, to another. If one computer dies, you still have the data on the other. Works great until you have a fire, flood, earthquake or theft. It is strongly recommended that you develop some strategy that moves the data off-premises at least once a week. If you have DSL at home and work, you can copy the data off the work computer to the home computer over the Internet -- as long as you are extremely careful about how you set up security to access your work computer. If you can get in from the Internet, a hacker might as well.
Backup strategies for businesses must include two items: (1) A local backup, preferably images of all the computers on the network; (2) an offsite backup that can be accessed in case of theft, flood, fire or other calamity in the office.
For onsite storage, you can copy your data or computer images to a Network Access Storage device (NAS) or an external USB/Firewire hard drive. Nothing else works as well for onsite backups.
For offsite backups, you can rotate media -- flash drives, USB drives or even tape, although we do not suggest using tape any longer; or you can use one of the Internet backup sites (Mozy and Carbonite are the best known). These sites have excellent security and reduce or eliminate the hacker risk you have when you use the Internet to backup from home.
For local storage, the NAS device seems to work best for most small businesses. These devices cost less than $500, are about the size of a hard-bound book, plug easily into your network and usually include backup software. While they cost more than plain USB hard drives, they are much easier to use. All computers on the network have access to them, each can have its own backup folder and once the backup is configured, there is little anyone need do other than check to make sure the backups are taking place. USB drives plug into one computer. You can share them on the network, but the host computer has to be on for the backups to happen. You can have one USB drive per computer, but that's more expensive than a NAS device for all but very small offices.
Then use an offsite service like Mozy or Carbonite for offsite backup. Alternatively, you can install a Pogoplug at work, access it from home and backup to a USB device at home. With your data backed up on a NAS device at work and then copied to a USB device at home you are pretty safe from anything but a major earthquake. This works much better than rotating USB or flash devices. We used to get two USB devices and rotate. By scheduling your weekly backup on Friday (or whenever) and taking it home, you can get decent offsite backup. However, it a pain to unplug and replug the USB's and we have found that too many forget to do it after a while.
If you or someone in the household is somewhat geeky, an excellent solution is to get two compatible routers, set up automatic VPN tunnels between them and then copy the NAS device at the office to a USB device at home. This is actually better than a Pogoplug -- unless you have difficulties. Troubleshooting VPN tunnels takes some computer skill. Pogoplug offers support, so someone else can have the headache if the backups stop working for some reason.
Oh, and one more thing about USB/Firewire drives: If possible, use the Firewire connection, not USB. Firewire is faster than USB2 and it uses less processing power from your CPU.
All of the above strategies will work. Some will work better than others. Most will only work if you actually follow the program. Whatever you do, set up something -- and follow it. Your business depends on it. VCC is here to help.
