I've come across it more times than I care to mention. Companies that spend very little time on their backup needs until it hits a point that they really need that data they just lost, or have to pay for expensive data recovery services. This is usually the point we are brought in.

So what happens if data is not backed up and there is not preparation for disaster?

The simplest scenario is a hard drive failure on one of the PCs (not so much of a problem with servers with RAID), and as time goes on this gets more and more likely. Hard drives being mechanical devices are the most prone component to fail, and recovery of a single hard drive can cost upwards of £700 and may still not restore all the data.

Other scenarios include accidental deletion over network shares, corruption of data to the worst case scenario of all you equipment and premises lost due to a larger disaster e.g. the building burning down, in which case any backups stored on-site will also be destroyed.

What are the options?

New tape backup device, and new tapes.

• Costs :-
• Tape drive - few hundred to a few thousand.
• Tapes - dependant on drive bought. Current prices are £30+
• Labour in installation and training, changing tapes and backup tests
• Advantages :-
  
• large storage capability
• Backups can be automated to a degree.
• Disadvantages :-
  
• tape is the least reliable method of backing up in my opinion, it still needs a member of staff to be responsible for changing, monitoring and verifying tapes which would also include training when members of staff leave.
• Typical backup software included is usually more complicated than it needs to be for a small company.

DVD-Recordable device

• Costs:-
  
• Drive - cheap
• DVD's - cheap
• Labour - Quick setup, but constant maintenance in backing up, verifying, labeling and storing.
• Advantages :-
  
• very cheap and storage suitable for some companies.
  
• Backup is usually reliable although is completely manual.
  
• A DVD stores 4.3Gb or 9Gb and is a small storage capacity compared to some data stores, hard drives and tapes.
• Disadvantages :-
  
• manual backups
  
• large room for error or simply forgetting to backup

Online Backup

• Costs :-
  
• Zero equipment setup cost, simply pay for what you backup.
  
• Installation and configuration around 15-30 minutes
• Can be set up or maintained by fairly non-technical staff.
• Advantages :-
  
• A simple and fully automated backup solution, backups are even automatically offsite every single night.
  
• Incremental versions are kept and so you can recover a file in any state up to 90 days or 10 backups previously.
  
• Piece of mind, backups are occuring correctly as if not you get an email.
  
• No real need to monitor, check or rotate the backups.
• Disadvantages :-
  
• while setup costs are zero, ongoing costs are slightly more expensive than backing up and monitoring yourself.
  
• Can be more costly with very large backup requirements.

Removable external harddrives

• Costs :-
  
• Labour - relatively quick to set up.
• Large External hard drives are cheap, and are always dropping in price or getting larger for the same price.
• Advantages :-
  
• Drives are very reliable, especially when compared to tapes and generally need much less maintenance.
• Very fast to backup and restore from.
• Disadvantages :-
  
• still needs a member of staff to monitor, rotate and take one drive offsite on a regular basis.
  
• More than one backup drive is recommended so it can be swapped to rotate data offsite.

Our Conclusion

These days we recommend online backup to everyone with less than 100Gb to backup. Online backup has less to go wrong, no set-up costs, needs very little attention compared to other solutions, and it is automatically off site every night and encrypted in a secure data warehouse without any user intervention. If there is an issue, an email is sent to the administrative contact for the backup. We also like to have a USB drive onsite for a fast alternative backup system. Backup is important and doing it twice is not overkill, for several reasons one is that Murphy's Law dictates that the day you need the backup it's failed the night before or you find some other problem, and secondly if you want a large (for instance 1Gb) file restored quickly then waiting for online backup will frustrate you (even though it's there). With a combination of USB and online backup you cover yourself and also allow for fast restoration on-site or slow and reliable restore from offsite. Finally enabling Shadow Copy and imaging you drive using something like DriveImageXML or Acronis True Image can help save that last bit of sanity.

There are many online suppliers these days, from cheap providers aimed at the home market an onwards. We at runPCrun recommend two providers -
BackupDirect*, simply because we've found BackupDirect's staff to be both friendly and helpful every time we've dealt with them and the quality of the product high. Based on the famous Iron mountain Backup solution and their prices are higher than some, but it is a comprehensive UK solution.
iBackup, but we haven't had enough experience with them to give a solid opinion.

If you're still not convinced, why not try a 15 day free trial at BackupDirect from runPCrun* and then relax knowing you've protected your business from disaster.

* means there is some referal or partnership with these suppliers via the links given. Check out our stance on reviews and recommendations.