Do You Have A Data Backup And Data Recovery Plan ?

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Data backup is rarely a part of the plans say a home computer user or business IT administrator, all of us, it will never happen to me or my company, but in reality we are just mentally preparing for the time we lose our data. like trying to quit smoking, we all know we should do it, but will find all.
Excuse not to. To be honest with yourself and ask yourself the question, you have a backup plan for your data, or more importantly, you have a> Re-establish your business plan should something go wrong, protect? All operators and owners now say that past computer as a useful part of our lives, but now they are an absolute necessity.

We confirm the data that is on our computer infrastructure is the most important asset of an organization. I ask again, what would happen if you lost your data and what you do to protect them?

 

The reasons for data lossare endless, human intervention would be a hardware failure, software failure, natural disasters, loss, theft, we can go, but we can be sure of one thing that over time the list is getting longer and longer.

Ever had anything stolen or lost before something? I have found in the IT industry for about 25 years, and as you can imagine, I have some bizarre stories about how computers and servers were stolen one. Laptops stolen from rear of car (data lost), he forgot a colleagueLeft his laptop on the roof of his car, problem is, he realized if he was 160 miles by road (data loss).

My friend’s office twice in two nights, the first time resulted in a loss of desktop computers and totally devastated alarm system (some data loss), and the second night was broken to take the servers along with the backup device and media! Apparently the heavy stuff was stolen during the second night when the thief had more time there, the alarm is not repaired quicklyenough (total data loss and their activities within 8 months). You can save money to plan, to avoid data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup.

Hardware failure

If you managed to lose it, never have stolen your laptop or your entire IT infrastructure, then well done, now we want to prepare ourselves for hardware errors. There are essentially only three mechanical parts inside a laptop computer or server, 1) hard drive, 2) backup drive 3) CDor DVD. Hard not to do and if it does not happen, but it will.

Do not get me wrong, if you take the failed drive to be an expert, they probably get most of your data back (phew) but expect to pay more than £ 5,000 for the pleasure (not phew) to. You can save money to plan, to avoid data loss in the first place by implementing a data backup.

Fire or disasters (natural or not).

I live in the UK, it is a beautiful place, because we do not have problems with forestFires, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., and so it will never be a major natural disaster, the extermination of the majority of a city. This is what I blasted until Bunsfield oil refinery, the air and flattened everything within a 3-mile radius expected.

There are a million and one reasons and scenarios, I can illustrate to you why you should backup your business data. We all know the practices of data backup is nothing more than common sense. Mission critical or sensitiveData that you do not want or can not afford to lose, should be ensured. PROTECT YOUR DATA!

If you really think that you lose do not need to backup your data, because you will never be there, please stop reading this article and have to go now and a little less boring.

Let’s talk about the different ways to backup your data and other backup services. If you are one of the following on board you will be able to the solution that best fits you or you find yourCompany.

Backup to CD solution.

To make your data to CD-file backup is easy to do that consume time to it every night, and you must be disciplined, to order up to one hour to one side to the job every night. To backup data to a CD drive is not an automatic process, and we all know busy people.

Once you backed up your data on CD, please always check whether the data is actually on the CD and then take home with them. There are noPoint they leave are stolen or destroyed by fire, together with your hardware.

Please do not us a CD for archiving data (documents safe) for a long time, as I did not expect this type of media also continues to be stable for more than 2 years. Backup to CD has many limitations, but it is certainly better than no backup of your data at all.

RAID – not just protect your backup server disks.

All servers should be every opportunity to stay alive;Running a RAID configuration will help to prevent data loss from hard drive failure. If you have 3 drives in a RAID 5 configuration will have your server when a drive fails tolerated. RAID does not protect you against fire, flood, theft or
another disaster coming our way, but provide business continuity.

This solution is usually not protect you from theft as an additional hard drives for RAID storage are usually installed on your computeror in other facilities on site. There is usually no protection from fire either so this method has its
Restrictions.

Secure offsite data backup and recovery via a third party organization. Offsite backup over the Internet or saving methods is usually associated with larger enterprises enterprises. In the past, the high cost of high-speed connectivity has been prohibitive for smaller companies.

This type of backup is to be completed now acceptedand gaining momentum around the globe. The main reason for this is grown, as the price for high-speed Internet connections is greatly reduced, virtually every business and every home is connected to the Internet through a minimum 2MB line as a result it is now possible to produce large quantities of backup data to a secure server offsite
Data center.

For me, the best element of an offsite backup solution is not the high encryption security in place, the price or the purposereplicated infrastructure development, where the data is stored, but it is the fact that an offsite backup solution is a completely automated process. Set and forget as soon as you set the software backup your data at a certain time each day, you can just forget it and let her work to protect your data preserved.

When I checked your backup process, I would implement all three of the above options. A RAID system for business continuity, offsiteBackup-to-business securely protect all my data, and a fast recovery, a CD backup only allow my critical data, which will keep my business running.

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Adventures in Data Backup and Data Recovery

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

 

Earlier this week, I showed you how to take apart your iMac and replace your hard drive I ended that with a promise to tell you the rest of the story.

 

Here it is:

 

After I installed the new hard drive (a 500GB 3.5-inch internal Seagate hard drive costing $99), to replace the computer’s nonfunctioning drive, I put my iMac back together and fired it up. I popped my Leopard install disc into the DVD slot, formatted the new hard drive, and installed the operating system. Within about 30 minutes, my iMac was back to life. I was ready to determine what happened to my old drive.

 

First, I bought a hard drive enclosure to convert my internal disk to an external hard drive. I bought an Antec enclosure for about $70 at Best Buy. It’s a simple black box that connects to your computer via USB. It wasn’t the most expensive enclosure on the shelf, but it did the trick.

 

After placing my internal hard drive in the enclosure, I plugged it into my iMac via USB. I waited (and waited and waited) for the hard drive to pop up in Finder. Eventually, it did. Unfortunately, only my Windows partition was accessible. My OS X files were gone.

I needed to find those files. I first tried the Windows app SpinRite from the Gibson Research Corporation.

 

Granted, the software works best on a drive that’s formatted with a Windows file system, but the latest version of the application, 6.0, works just fine with HFS Plus, the Mac OS X file system. I connected my old hard drive to a Windows PC and ran the software on the drive. failed. It wasn’t able to access anything from my OS X partition. I’d wasted $89.

 

Almost at wit’s end, I tried one more utility that I had heard great things about: the Mac app Disk Warrior. I bought the software and, $108 (after tax) later, it was installed on my iMac. DiskWarrior immediately found “Macintosh HD”–the name for my drive’s OS X partition–and gave me the option to repair it. DiskWarrior found dozens of issues with the hard drive. It reported that some of the files on the drive were corrupted and inaccessible. That stunk, but it was better than nothing, right?

 

Once DiskWarrior was finished repairing my drive, I was able to access many of my old files. Some of my music was gone, half of my documents were corrupted, and I wasn’t able to transfer many applications. But the really important stuff was salvaged.

DiskWarrior’s setup, repair, and recovery was simply fantastic. I recommend it to anyone in times of trouble.

 

Lesson learned

 

During this crazy week of trying to restore my hard drive, I learned two valuable lessons: No backup solution is too expensive. And it’s better to restore (from backup) than recover (using a tool like DiskWarrior).

 

Before my hard drive failed, I didn’t have a backup service running. I hadn’t backed up any files through Time Machine for more than 400 days. The only backup I could find on a DVD was from 2007. I didn’t use any online backup services, like Carbonite or Mozy.

 

I didn’t have a Time Capsule or external hard drive running. I was at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City last summer debating purchasing a Time Capsule. I decided against it, reasoning that its $299 price tag was too high. Had I only known then that I would end up paying more than $350 for solutions to restore my lost hard drive, I wouldn’t have hesitated to buy it.

I screwed up and it cost me money. Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure you back up your files. Mozy and Carbonite, two great online backup services, cost just $54.95 per year. An external hard drive can be as cheap as $100. DVD media is even cheaper. Don’t be forced to spend too much money on restore services that might not work. It’s much quicker and affordable to back up all your data before disaster strikes.

Now, excuse me while I configure my Time Capsule.

Check out Don’s Digital Home podcast, Twitter stream, and FriendFeed.

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs

 

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Data Backup Software

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Data Backup software has evolved tremendously in the past few years. There are now several options, both in-house and off-site that can be utilized to backup business information and give piece of mind involving the concern of lost data.

In years past, if information were lost due to a hard drive crash or a damaged computer component, then the only recourse was to simply recreate the information. Now, if used properly, information can be stored in an abundance of ways, assuring the business owner and clients that when a computer issue arises, important data can be recovered.

 While the best protection for your files is to make sure that they are backed-up before a problem occurs, this is not always what happens. Unfortunately data backup software is not always thought about until after there has been a problem with a computer component or a drive has crashed.

 Today, there are many forms of media used to backup the data within the office itself or it is also possible to use an off-site method of storing the information. However, if data has not been previously backed-up before a computer issue occurs, then there may still be a way to recover data.

If your company does not own data recovery software or does not have an in-house specialist versed in recovering data, then a professional data recovery service might be your next step. A specialist may be able to recover lost data from a damaged hard drive or computer; however, a huge factor is exactly what type of damage has been done.

 The best way to not ever find out if a recovery specialist can retrieve your data is to have a backup recovery plan already in place. This means having the resources to backup your information. Simply hoping that you will never need to recover files is not enough.

There are many kinds of  Data backup software available today; the key is to find the one that works best for your company’s system. Having a backup procedure in place will save you time and money, if indeed a situation arises that causes you to lose precious data. Use  Data Back Up software before you need a Data Recovery Service.

 

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